On Kaspar Hauser and AI

words by Weronika Murek

Who is Kaspar Hauser?

Depends on who asks.

Some say he was a mysterious young man appeared nearby Nuremberg in Germany, claiming to have been raised in a total isolation from human beings. He could barely speak or walk. He is said to carry a note saying he wished to be a cavalryman like his father. His origins remained unclear and so is his demise.

Now, again.

Who is Kaspar Hauser?

A hero of Werners Herzog’s 1974 movie called The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Herzog seeks to portrait a lonely and aloof character of an outsider and the deep unknowable human soul. Hauser is a symbol of innocence corrupted by civilization and the movie itself is a mixture between documentary and allegory.

Now, again, for the last time.

Who is Kaspar Hauser in that specific matter?

He was an inspiration for the director Piotr Wiśniewicz who made a documentary About a Hero in which he tried to explore the possible role of AI in the field of storytelling. The movie is combined with a factual documentary sphere in which Wiśniewicz gathers different interviews presenting various approaches to the topic of AI, technology and future. The other half of the movie is based on a screenplay by AI, which had been previously „feed” and trained on the works of Werner Herzog. In the first scene of the movie we can hear him talking about his disposition towards the whole idea of the movie. Known for his famous quote on how „AI will not make it to deliver a better movie than me even if it takes it 4500 years”, Herzog remains bitter and grumpy. When asked if the would allow the director to use his works to train AI, replies: sure, you can feed it, you can feed it with albinos crocodile from my documentary about palaeolith period art, I am sure it will fail, I wish you best of luck though.

That might be Werner Herzog’s voice. That might not be Werner Herzog’s voice. That could be „Werner Herzog”. Someone „like Werner Herzog”. Who knows? From now on, Herzog/„Herzog” remains a voice in the background. We might think it is him indeed who participates in the narrative of the documentary. Yet we cannot be sure. It might have been a deepfake.

What has Kaspar Hauser to do with AI?

From one point of view the connection is simple and it bridges between the hero of Werzog’s movie and the name that Piotr Wiśniewicz has given his co-writer – AI machine. Yet, there is more to it. The history of historical figure of Kaspar Hauser appears from nowhere, unformed, naive and foreign to human community. There is a parallel between a human mind deprived of the culture and rules of society and its regulations, and a machine mind trained on the culture and rules made by society but never really BORN to bear it or to be into it. The historical or literary Kaspar Hauser learns that to be human it is tu suffer, to learn, a language, to exist within a rules one pretty much understands. AI-Kaspar learns a language, learns the rules and it learns to imitate the insight it gives – but had not lived through it. Kaspar Hauser has been unknowable and so was AI: we know it learns quickly yet we can only imagine briefly its limitations.

What the AI movie is about?

Here comes the story: once upon a time in a German town called Getunkirchenburg (which did not exist) lived a man called Dorem Clery (which did not exist). There is a story of his miserable fate and death that has to be explained by the investigation pursued by Werner Herzog or „Werner Herzog”. His voice takes us from the very scene of death to the journey through the small streets and lanes, we witness the conversations with the family of Clery and its friends and co-workers. We felt that his fate might have been moving to us, if we only did not know that it all has been faked.

But what was faked? The emotional potential of the story or the emotions we had towards it?

When tried to crack the concept up, I asked AI to prepare of the review of Wiśniewicz’s movie.

It sumps it up: it is not a movie about what AI can do but it is about what we are willing to believe when it does it well. When I implied that it should write a review of the AI performance in that very movie, it said that the best of that matter has it is the fact that it delivers us a new kind of protagonist: the non-person. The one which or who is not just a character in the movie or its narrator – it is its thesis as the whole performance is rather to disorientate us than persuades or settle within the certain ground or environment.

But, of course, the AI would say so.

It has been interesting to me though is that the answer seems to rely on the concept of the aesthetic matter over the existential matter. AI can gives us moving story about life and fate and death and it may be enough for it to work for us, if it fits into our expectations by having certain rhythm and shape. AI-Kaspar feeds the esthetical hunger. Most of those who described their feelings toward the movie come across with the idea of how successful it is in the technical terms and measures. After all it seems enough for the text to be like „Herzog’s” rather than to delivering certain or essential communications. It is more important that it „looked or seemed like Herzog’s” rather that it may „tell us all those things Herzog would with his creation”. It seemed like Witkacy’s dream come true: we have created the concept of „pure form”. It might not seem to be enough but it may not necessarily be the point. Our culture – social media-wise – becomes more and more visual-driven. It is not about „what” anymore, but about „how”. The message comes with the picture or it does not come at all.

In that way a machine that makes everything to be into a form or into a style, or into a „like…”, it also comes as something we may adapt as something just enough for our needs and desires. If it is true that we live within a society of narcissism, would it bother anyone that AI provides us only with a maze of mirrors?

Yet, the humans are not lost.

The screenplay has been prepared by AI but the execution itself is made by director who works on frames, music and after all – timing of that story and timing of scenes. It all gives a sense of Roy Anderson’s movies in which the unsettling lies between the casual and common and it is often implied by the uncomfortable silence between the characters, portraying their despair and loneliness. There is something interesting in the way humans perceive the timing of their actions. Reacting too quickly may feel artificial, mechanical, almost rehearsed. Reacting too slow and the moment becomes uncomfortable. A delayed response can feel like withdrawal; the time makes the meaning of the gesture to rot. Within the timing that has been perceived and felt by humans, Wiśniewicz creates very human story based on something artificial. And if it works, in works while being animated by humans who are dealing with stiff and artificial forms.

Yet, it might not be that important anymore.

As a TV personality Stephen Fry puts it at the end of the movie: technology is not an noun, it is a verb. It has been constantly and tirelessly changing and reshaping. The only danger there is, is that humanity would lost its sense of being special. If so, what did it mean „special”? To act within a bunch of rules, practice and habits that any machine can live to imitate as well? If so, maybe the whole humanity was just much ado about nothing.

It is Stephen Fry who claims so. Or it is „Stephen Fry”?