Welcome to Chat Haus, the coworking space for AI chatbots

Nestled between a primary school and a public library in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn contains a new kind of “luxury” coworking space.

Dubbed the chat haus, this space has many of the elements you would find in a traditional coworking office: people who insist on their computer keyboards, another person who takes a phone call, pausing someone else on their computer to take a sip of coffee.

However, there is an important difference: Chat Haus is a coworking space for AI -chatbots and everything – including the people – is made of cardboard.

More specifically, the Chathaus is an art exhibition of Brooklyn artist Nim Ben-Reuven. It houses a handful of cardboard robots that work on their computers through movements that are driven by small engines. There is a plate that offers desk room for “only” $ 1,999 a month and another that labels the space as “a luxury co-working space for chatbots.”

Ben-Reuven told WAN that he built the exhibition as a way to cope with and bring humor to the fact that the majority of his work-that is largely running around graphic design and videography is pushed-in the AI ​​world. He added that he is already refused freelance jobs, because companies turn to AI tools instead.

“It was like an expression of frustration in humor, so I wouldn’t be too bitter about the industry that change so quickly and under my nose and don’t want to be part of the shift,” said Ben-Reuven. “So I had something like that, I will just fight back with something crazy that I can laugh at myself.”

He said he also wanted to prevent this exhibition from being too negative because he didn’t think that would tell the right message. He said that making art that is clearly negative, forces it in a corner and requires that it defends itself. He added that giving the display also helps a “lighter tone” to attract viewers of all ages and with all opinions about AI.

While Ben-Reuven and I were chatting at Pan Pan Vino, a cafe across the window view, countless groups of people stopped watching the chathaus. Three women at the age of thousand stopped and took photos. A group of alone-out-of-school elementary students stopped and asked their questions from their adult companions.

Ben-Reuven also thought that, despite what AI does with the industry in which he works, the situation remains lighter than some of the other horrors and trauma that are currently going in the world.

“I mean, ai, in terms of the creative world, such a light thing seems to be compared to so many of the other, such as war, things that happen in the world and like the terror and trauma that exists,” he said.

Ben-Reuven has always used cardboard in his art. He made a lifelike replica of an airport terminal from cardboard in high school. Between freelance jobs in the past decade, he has worked on building these cardboard robots, or “cardboard babies” as he calls them. So during the use of these cardboard robots, a natural choice for display was – he joked that he also needed a reason to get them out of his apartment – the material also gives a different comment on AI.

“The transience of this cardboard stuff, and the possibility to collapse under even a little weight, is how I feel that AI has interaction with the creative industry,” he said. “People can make their Midjourney images that really look great on Instagram and 12 -year -olds are not excited to no end, but with every level of control it is waste, and I feel that you look close enough to these cardboard things, they are easily striking and easy to fall under every weight.”

However, he understands why consumers are attracted to a number of art generated by AI. He compared it with junk food and the fast-acting serotonin hit that comes from eating junk food before it is digested quickly.

The Chat Haus is a temporary display because the building that houses it is waiting for it to be approved for renovation. Ben-Reuven hopes to keep the display at least mid-May and hopes to move to a larger gallery if he can. He wants to be able to add more – but is worried about where he will place extra materials in his apartment as soon as the display is over.

“I just thought it would be funny to express this idea of, such as, a very cute, kind of creepy, baby robots that type away because of our chatgpt prompts somewhere, working non-stop just as much as electricity as electricity as Switzerland in a year,” Ben Reuven said.

The Chat Haus can currently be seen in the windshield of 121 Norman Avenue in Brooklyn, the Greenpoint district in New York.