AI(u)tomaton Chess Player Diagram, 2024                                                                          AI-Generated Drawings

Generated based on the Automaton Chess Player (German: Schachtürke), these drawings demonstrate a chess-playing machine constructed in 1770, which can play a sophisticated game against a human opponent. It has been exhibited as an automaton, although it is in fact human operated. The original drawing indicates early human fascination towards fully automated thinking machines, remarkably, for the purpose of entertainment. When recreated by AI text-to-images model to-date, the drawings navigate how AI interprets games, machines, humans, and the relationship between the two. This experiment is part of a research project to construct an alternative narrative of computer genealogy, focusing on the shift of human subjectivity along computer history