An artistic intervention into medical AI, The Neverending Cure reveals the hallucinations of diagnostic algorithms by confronting them with hand-painted watercolors. This immersive exhibition probes the boundaries of trust, health, and machine intelligence.
In The Neverending Cure, artist duo kennedy+swan investigate the increasing intrusion of AI systems into the intimate realm of biology and medicine. Collaborating with doctoral researchers at the BIFOLD Institute, the duo explores what happens when an AI model trained to detect lung cancer is tricked by watercolors that mimic microscopic tissue structures.
The centerpiece is an experiment where glass-mounted watercolors—painted in the style of cellular scans—are submitted to a medical AI. Interpreting these illusions as diseased tissue, the model produces confident diagnoses, exposing both the impressive capabilities and the critical blind spots of medical AI.
Kennedy+swan question not just the accuracy of such systems but the deeper implications of their use: What are the societal biases encoded in their training data? How does AI reshape our understanding of sickness and health? Should models be trained with foreign, even fictional, data to become truly robust?
The exhibition comprises:
By delving into these themes, The Neverending Cure becomes both a critique and a speculative glimpse into a future where medical AI might promise "eternal healing"—but at what cost?
