Hyun Cho

 <The Hole>

VR ,Shovel

2021

 

 When the game starts the player is inside a hole and there is a shovel on the ground. The player picks up the shovel and starts digging at the bottom of the hole. Inside this game, the A.I. is motivating the player to do the Captcha labor to educate them. By cheering and giving applause as the player starts mining at the bottom of the hole, the players are motivated to keep playing the game. The clapping hands disappear when the player stops shoveling. When repetitive labor is done, the player’s elevation gets lower and lower inside the hole. In the game, the hole symbolizes a data mines where workers keep working behind the scene and the act of shoveling and solving captcha puzzles are menial works done by people which is called data labeling. And lastly, the cheering hands are the big corporations and A.I system giving superficial motivations for their personal gain. I am skeptical about Korea's digital New Deal policy. In the past, coal miners did dangerous work at low wages, and as machines developed and resources dried up, the whole mining industry entered a declining phase. Wouldn't data labels also have the same ending as traditional miners? What will happen if A.I. develops to a point where humans are not needed? What will happen to the structure of human labor when this time comes? With data increasingly becoming a key resource, the importance of human labor is diminishing. So who will guarantee the workers' social safety net?