EXCERPT There are more than enough terrors to be found there; but such terrors are not all there is to the outside. Mark Fisher There are few topics as intangible and indefinable as artificial intelligence. Its conceptual roots can be traced back to the dawn of time; its future takes us far beyond the known world. It is shot through with polemic and wild speculation: what it is and what it is not is the subject of continual debate. Giving physical form to this abstract subject was a curatorial challenge we faced while working on a major landmark exhibition surveying the history of AI for the Barbican Centre in London. The exhibition, entitled AI: More than Human, opened in May 2019, after a three-year-long planning and production process. It offered the public—ninety thousand visitors in its first three months—a comprehensive overview of the history, social effects, and potential future of AI. It continues to tour across continents and cultures. At the time of its conception, it coincided with a season of AI shows across Europe which focused on art, creativity and AI, or the ethical questions that the technology raises. AI: More than Human was different for its scale, its interdisciplinarity, its transculturalism, and for its philosophical enthusiasm about the future. Its broad lens was essential for challenging the Western AI narrative and expanding common perspectives on AI, pushing some viewers out of their comfort zones. It was experimental in the connections it made, fearless about the science, and (something that is unusual for the field) was curated by a core team of women. Despite the indeterminacy of the subject matter, the show retained a clear point of view. The crux was the philosophical and technological borderland between Europe and the US, Japan, and, as much as was practically possible, China. In terms of the development of AI, there is a vast history of interconnections between these cultures, but there are also dominant, often superficial narratives that locate specific attitudes and relationships to the technology in these different parts of the world—one set of relations between capitalism, technology, and consumerism in the West; another between government, authoritarianism, and population in China; another between nationhood, youth culture, and innovation in Japan. The intention of this show was to ensure that the Western AI narrative was seen as just one narrative among others, most particularly for those viewing the exhibition in a Western context …