Decision Space – Conceptual dataset for machine learning

Created by Sebastian Schmieg and launched in October 2016 on the website of The Photographers' Gallery, Decision Space marked the beginning of a series of works raising questions around photography, big-data, surveillance, the hidden manual labor behind artificial intelligence and the biases embedded in algorithmic systems. In Decision Space, visitors were invited to assign all the images available on the gallery's website to one of four categories: Problem, Solution, Past and Future. The project resulted in a new conceptual dataset for machine learning and machine vision which can be now be browsed and downloaded at "This is the Problem, the Solution, the Past and the Future". This new dataset makes possible experiments in teaching computers how to understand images within a set of meaningful and complex categories. It consists of around 2.500 photos and includes artists like Cindy Sherman, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Elliott Erwitt, Sebastião Salgado, Weegee, Valie Export, Francesca Woodman, Simon Fujiwara, Trevor Paglen and many more.