It sounds like the short form of mum, but this is Google’s new AI Multitask Unified Model – “MUM” for short – which has been consistently learning the intentions behind our questions since 2021, no matter what language we speak. This enables it to answer even faster and more precisely. MUM knows what we want. We can ask it anything. With every search query, MUM learns to understand us better. Will she soon know more about us than we know about ourselves? What is she? Mother or monster?
An organic something, similar to an eye, scans the environment like a surveillance camera. It is MUM. It watches over us. A person working on a sewing machine can be seen from different angles on 3 monitors.
The recordings were made during a work-in-progress as part of the co-operation project “About the spatial dimension of skinning“. They show the sculptor Esther Irina Pschibul sewing a “protective skin” from dried pig bladders.
“Secretly, we are all just looking for a higher authority.
Someone to tell us what the hell to do.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Update für die Übermutter vom 29.8.2021
