John Cronin: ‘AI will recalibrate how we create… it has the potential to change what it is to be human’

Art: What Lies Beneath

John Cronin’s 'Artificial Bee Colony 5: ­Automated Bias'

Niall MacMonagle

Dublin-born John Cronin grew up in “a very supportive environment” and “the idea of art resonated with me on an instinctual level”. “When you’re young,” he says, “there’s an element of ‘Look what I can do’, which in my teenage years became photorealism, to show off my capabilities.”

At school his teacher John Coyne “was always encouraging and helpful” and his teenage subject matter “became what would impress in a portfolio applying to art college. Someone told me ‘the assessors love to see an investigative mind’, so I took old watches and onions apart to pretend I was interested in mechanics.”