The Gratitude Machine

The Gratitude Machine is an AI who is learning how to be thankful. You can submit a 'thank you for...' message to train the model and teach it what gratitude looks like. In response, the machine will reply to you with two more thank yous, multiplying your original gratitude. The machine was born in 2020 to reroute the now-ubiquitous GPT series of AI – then described as the “the world’s most dangerous AI” – to a be tool for contemplation, ecological thought, communion and prayer. They were co-created with Milton Almonacid, a Mapuche researcher, and released with backend support from Ricardo Wölker. Their birth was inspired by Mapuche indigenous cosmology and a treatment for depression where the sufferer must repeat the words ‘thank you thank you thank you’ repeatedly. The piece premiered at MozFest, lived briefly as a website (server for AIs are expensive) and since then, we're always happy to bring it out for workshops and exhibitions.