Useless GPT

Link:  https://huggingface.co/spaces/seanay17/uselessgpt

Artists: Sean Cho Ayres

Description: UselessGPT is a critical design project that interrogates user expectations of AI systems through defamiliarization. Built as a functional chatbot interface, the application systematically refuses assistance, responding to all queries with randomized dismissals. By foregrounding refusal as rhetorical strategy, the project destabilizes assumptions of AI utility and invites reflection on the affective labor embedded in conversational interfaces—positioning technological skepticism as both critique and creative practice.

Artist Statement: As someone who describes myself as "AI agnostic," I find myself perpetually caught between techno-utopian promise and reactionary dismissal. This project refuses both positions. By constructing a chatbot that systematically withholds assistance, I'm not condemning AI tools but defamiliarizing them—stripping the interface of its performed competence to reveal the affective expectations we bring to these encounters. The snarky refusals ("I'm an AI, not a miracle worker") parody the cheerful servility baked into commercial systems while foregrounding a question my broader work continually poses: what do we lose when we optimize away friction, error, and resistance?

Bio: Sean Cho A. is a poet and AI ethicist living in the southern United States. His work has been supported by NVIDIA, The University of California Irvine's Center for Asian Studies, and elsewhere.