#include<iostream>
int main() {
int i;
while(i == 0) {
std::cout << i;
}
std::cout << "RUN!" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Academic Statement
AI Prison: A Minimalist Critique of Machine Intentionality
AI Prison is a conceptual software-based artwork that interrogates the ontological assumptions surrounding artificial intelligence and intentionality. The work consists of a C++ program that enters an infinite loop, continuously evaluating a condition that can never be satisfied. This structural impasse is not a programming error but a deliberate metaphor for the impossibility of autonomous agency within computational systems. The work critiques the tendency in both scientific and artistic discourses to anthropomorphize AI, attributing to it qualities such as creativity, intention, or consciousness. Torre positions this as a cultural misstep—one rooted in a positivist epistemology that conflates output with agency. Rather than engaging in speculative futurism, AI Prison foregrounds the material and architectural limitations of digital systems, particularly their dependence on human-defined memory structures and execution environments. By reducing the system to its most basic logical form, the work exposes the futility of seeking intentionality in machines that are, by design, incapable of self-determination. It is a philosophical and aesthetic reflection on the boundaries of computation and the narratives we construct around it.
Artist Statement
AI Prison is a reflection on the limits of machine agency. It’s a simple program—an infinite loop that waits for something that will never happen. It tests for intentionality, but the condition it checks can never be true. The machine is stuck, not because it’s broken, but because it’s built that way. This work is not about mocking AI, nor about denying its technical achievements. It’s about resisting the temptation to believe that machines can want, decide, or create in the way we do. I see too many narratives—especially in art—that treat AI as if it were conscious or creative. I think we need to be more careful. AI Prison is part of my ongoing interest in how technology shapes our thinking. It’s a reminder that no matter how complex our systems become, they remain bound by the architectures we design. The machine in this work is not dreaming of freedom. It doesn’t know it’s trapped. But we do.
