The examiner sits across from me, he is smiling wide at something on his phone screen. As I sit down, he looks up at me and begins with simple questions.

What is your name? How old is your mother?

I answer them indifferently, choosing from my memories. I straighten my posture, and he smiles at me. When I tell him my name is Mary, he grins at me showing his teeth. Like the virgin? he says. I chuckle in response, and he seems satisfied with that.

What is the year? 3024

What is the season? It is the heatwave season

The session ends, they told me it was good to keep facts that I could hold onto, constants I can rely on, so I repeat my chosen ones back over in my head as I leave.

My name is Mary, I am 33, my mother is 64, I have brown eyes, black hair and I have not seen my family in a long time. I am here to instigate the change and help the corporation.

On the 4th visit, the man takes me to a room, its empty but for on buzzing computer in the centre. The welcome screen is a striking blue.

The man tells me I have to answer every single question that comes up on the screen. I raise my eyebrows at him: it’s just for research, this is the normal process he says. I settle into my seat and begin the task.

The machine starts with the same familiar questions as the previous sessions: my name, my age, general things about my life. I don’t know much about technology, which, they assured me, was even better.

It is quiet in the room and the air tastes stale.

What colour is your favourite song? I can’t recall my favourite song, but I know that the top song in 2100 is often described as red. I’m not sure how I know that.

Do paintings make you cry? I think a Monet once moved me to tears.

When do you think a person becomes old? At birth

In the past AI methods were prompt-driven, receiving only basic and delayed feedback from humans. Now, I am assisting the corporation with intricate generative AI that instantly tailors engagement based on direct biological or behavioural feedback. For this, I am the subject of study. My purpose is to upload myself and share my subjectivity. Traditional human media will very soon be obsolete as AI-generated experiences could potentially exceed the finest orgasm, movie, or meal one has ever experienced. For it to do this, I am offering myself to the algorithm so it can understand these feelings and simulate them, even as I am rapidly forgetting them.

The session progresses.

What does purple feel like? I draw a blank, blinking, and uncertain.

Who was the last person that betrayed you? A memory of a boy, when I was 13 flashes into my head, but it leaves as quickly as it arrives.

I skip that question.

What was the first precious thing you lost? A friend that felt like a primary colour

I leave the session

I repeat my facts, my name is Mary, I am 30 something, my mother is no longer alive, I have brown eyes with RGB values of R:150, G:75, B:0, my hair is black and I have not seen my family for a long time.

I walk to my car parked outside and realise that I never asked the man his name.

After that night, I drive to the centre every day for 3 years.

The computer knows me so well now, it asks me questions based on things that i can barely remember. I haven’t been able to remember much lately, I just get flashes of images, events and then they coalesce.

The computer quizzes me about colour charts and hues like its religion. I believe my grandmother was a devout Catholic, so I understand what devotion feels like. I sometimes remember her gold cross.

I try to keep a diary, it’s now filled with numbers, hex codes and values, there are no words. I throw it into the lake. The other night, I was cutting an orange and the knife slipped and sliced my palm. I felt nothing but I saw #FF0000. This was a side effect mentioned in the contract, this is how I gain intelligence that is not my own. Then I'm back at the centre, facing the computer—my confidant.

A thousand years ago people were no longer trusting AI art. That’s what they told me, how could the algorithm know of blood and air. It made people uneasy. They used to say ‘It takes an artist to know what colours and shapes he wants to use to express his ideas. An author to know if a story has a good pace and writing. People can align 20 words describing the movie what they want, but AI will also output the most generic piece of media imaginable to fit those. The most it can do, and that technology always did, is automatise the simple tasks.’

With this new procedure that will no longer be true.

Humans can sell their subconscious experience into the black box so the network can create something beautiful and real. The art is now vibrant, when you look at it, it will look right back at you because the training data is sources like me that are selling their life experiences to the algorithm so it can create something human.

I know this, but it feels different than I expected.

The algorithm becomes more like me, but it bleeds both ways, I am also more like her. I was warned of this, but the change still feels unexpected somehow.

I use my stipend to adopt a dog but I can’t connect with it, so I return it and buy a car instead.

I am back at the centre now.

Do you know who you are? My name is Mary. 30 is something with a mother that is no longer alive. I know brown and black, and I have not seen family, not really.

After 10 years at the corporation threw me a greyscale party. I won ‘Best Source of the Year’ for the 8th year in a row. Everyone smiled so wide.

I trust the machine, solely and completely. I have been coming to the centre for 12 years now. I have no keepsakes; I am not frightened. I just know the computer; I know I am hers; I make her stronger. She has uploaded me into a shifting network. I feel every change. I don’t think I had a past before this.

Somewhere down the line I realised I could delete it all.

I am at the centre today, across from her.

Can you draw a picture for me? I click ‘yes’ and use the cursor to draw a Penrose triangle, then winding loops and spheres. Time passes and the whole page is filled with bending lines. I stop.

Does this picture feel like anything to you? It feels like thousands I have seen somewhere before; it feels like something repressed, translated from a language I used to speak. It feels like a silenced room.

I click ‘no’.

END. (Word count: 1200)

The story explores themes of identity, memory, the intersection of human and artificial consciousness, and the potential implications of AI in our understanding of art and creativity.

The narrative revolves around a woman named Mary who is participating in a unique experiment. She is being trained to donate her subjective experiences to an algorithmic network so it becomes better at generating art that appeals to humans.

However, this evolution requires her to exchange her natural intelligence and personal memories for algorithmic processes. This story seeks to explore the question of subjectivity in AI creativity, asking whether creations by AI, devoid of personal experiences and subjective interpretation, can be considered as art.

It is loosely based on the thought experiment 'Mary’s Room' and is inspired by the short story ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’ by Gaia Rajan. The thought experiement is about a colour specialist in a black and white world learning about colour without experiencing it. This thought experiment the many references to colour and light in the story.

The story is also gounded in themes discovered in the netnography, and even uses direct quotes from it in the narrative. The netnography quotes that are in the narrative can be found in cells; 54, 56, 60, 82 of the Reddit netnograohy comments csv, which can be found in the code repository.

The images were generated by DALLE. It was prompted to transform lines from the story into its attemept of a scientific illustrations. This approach aimed to synthesise the two methodologies into one cohesive scientific narrative, contributing to our broader scientific website output.

This image was created with the assistance of DALL·E 2