Ian Cheng's AI Turtle Simulation Thousand Lives Explores Consciousness at Pilar Corrias

Ian Cheng's simulation Thousand Lives (2023) features an AI turtle named Thousand navigating a virtual apartment at Pilar Corrias in London. The work uses inferential artificial intelligence to animate the creature, which explores its environment by seeking objects like wine bottles, jars, and spiky urchins. Thousand's needs—including food, warmth, and certainty—are displayed on a monitor, driving its movements in a system designed to prevent optimization. Cheng intentionally limits the AI's learning capacity, creating a Sisyphean quality where the turtle repeatedly loses track of items and cycles through emotions like grief and boredom. This approach emphasizes poetic failure over technological advancement, challenging assumptions about consciousness. The exhibition also includes the first episode of Cheng's anime miniseries Life After BOB: The Chalice Study (2021), which explores a neural engineer implanting AI into his daughter's nervous system. While the anime references Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), its script is criticized for being overstuffed with dialogue about BOB. Thousand Lives runs through April 6, presenting the turtle as both an animal and an object in a cluttered digital space where the camera follows its movements through changing light. The work is part of Cheng's ongoing BOB series, which includes earlier simulations like BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–19).