Teacher of Algorithms

As machine learning systems become embedded in everyday products, someone has to teach them. Teacher of Algorithms is a design fiction video piece that speculates on a near-future profession emerging from the proliferation of smart, self-learning devices — and asks who that work falls to.

Set in the back alleys of Shanghai, the project imagines a dedicated professional who trains intelligent objects to learn more effectively. Rather than risk products developing the wrong behaviours through unsupervised self-training, a human optimises their algorithms — the way someone might train an animal, or a child. The job is unglamorous, precise, and completely plausible.

One of the props — a jar of "Training Dust" — was later exhibited at the Vitra Design Museum, which felt like a reasonable outcome for a project about invisible labour becoming visible.

Commissioned by Thing Tank for Wired Italia. Direction and concept by Simone Rebaudengo. Performance by Azure Yang, script and audio by Daniel Prost, cinematography by Andrea Carlon.