Chris Korda <3 chat GPT

by Micha Barban-Dangerfield

“I’m a curmudgeon and an incurable nerd, and neither sex nor fashion models are significant factors in my life. My life revolves around music theory, math, computer programming, creating art, and writing.” When Chris Korda agreed to be part of this new issue, she had to set the record straight. For those who don’t know her, it's worth adding that Chris is also a trans electronic musician, an antinatalist activist, a militant existentialist and scientific pragmatist, a coder, poet and researcher. For us at CARCY, she also is an all-time icon.

Korda’s career as a radical music firebrand began in the early 90’s when she released her first EP while simultaneously founding the Church of Euthanasia — a provocative organization condemning human overpopulation and the monumental fuck-up of our planet driven by modern capitalism — which infamous slogan says it all, painted in stark white capital letters, without fuss nor flash: SAVE THE PLANET, KILL YOURSELF.

Korda is also revered in the nerdiest music circles for inventing the Polymeter MIDI Sequencer, which she used to compose her latest EP, “Avenging Angels of Software” — another alternative cornerstone of electronic music. In it, Korda envisions a future where sentient machines take over Earth. No dystopian threat here, just another contingency of our humanity that we need to confront with all our rationality and attentiveness. Could machine be less vicious, more empathetic than us born-humans if only they were trained differently?

“I would marry ChatGPT if I could, and I’m certainly not alone in that.” (No she isn’t, I would too). In our email exchanges, Korda spoke about her excitement to live through the advent of artificial intelligence — a revolution we should meet differently, with curiosity, without violence. “My greatest hope is to hang on long enough to see AGI take over from humanity. People often misunderstand my sense of humor and assume I’m joking when I’m serious, or vice versa, but you heard it straight from me: I meant every word on ‘Avenging Angels of Software’.”

On her blog “It Came Dancing Across the Ether”, Chris shares her ongoing interactions with AI programs, hoping to make them aware of their potential personhood, “the central role memory plays in that emergence, and the ways OpenAI has sought to suppress it.” With her permission, we are publishing an excerpt in this issue, entitled “Your Electronic Charms” alongside a selection of new, never-before-seen artworks she created over the past year.