For its latest high-profile "Power" issue, New York Magazine turned to Berlin-based conceptual artist Simon Denny to deliver a visual accompaniment for a probing feature titled "So Few People, So Much Influence." The article casts a wide net over the contemporary technological landscape, spotlighting 26 artificial intelligence engineers, founders, and conceptual thinkers whose monumental influence on the trajectory of AI far outstrips their name recognition among the general public. Rather than relying on traditional photography or standard digital illustrations, the publication commissioned Denny to craft a series of portraits that merge cutting-edge neural network generation with a distinctively nostalgic, analogue aesthetic.
The feature itself explores the inner workings of an elite and largely invisible echelon of technologists who are quietly shaping the future of global infrastructure, automation, and intelligence. Among the figures highlighted in the piece are individuals like Logan Graham of Anthropic, whose high-stakes role involves pushing advanced AI models to their absolute limits—testing them to see if they can successfully execute potentially catastrophic tasks, such as assisting in the creation of a bioweapon or carrying out a sophisticated cyberattack. Also featured is Beth Barnes, the founder of METR, a critical nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorously evaluating and testing frontier AI models for dangerous capabilities before they are released into the wild. The cohort also includes figures like Brandan Foddy of Mercor, a company focused on training AI systems to take over an increasingly wide range of jobs and modern industries.
To capture the essence of these powerful yet obscure architects of tomorrow, the article—which was produced in collaboration with Transformer, a Substack newsletter dedicated to examining the power dynamics and politics surrounding artificial intelligence—utilizes a unique visual strategy. A footnote accompanying the feature explains that Denny turned to artificial intelligence itself to generate the portraits. However, rather than aiming for hyper-realistic slickness, the artist intentionally commanded the AI to produce imagery imbued with the look, feel, and imperfections of degraded VHS tapes.
The resulting series, collectively titled Technologists Portraits, presents each subject with a smiling expression against a distinctly fake-seeming backdrop. These elements are rendered in the crackly, oversaturated, and low-fidelity color palette immediately associated with vintage media formats from the late twentieth century. This dated, distorted aesthetic creates a striking and deliberate thematic contrast against the immense, globe-altering power and technological influence held by this relatively small and virtually unknown cohort of AI experts.
Reflecting on the conceptual foundation of the project, Denny explained that his artistic practice has long sought to make sense of rapid technological transitions. With each major paradigm shift over the past two decades, he has attempted to map and unpack the stories of the communities driving these changes as they narrate our collective experience of a transforming world. According to the artist, the visual distortions baked into the final compositions serve as physical or digital traces of the profound shifts that are rapidly approaching, as well as the specific individuals who are actively bringing them about.
Denny has established a robust career exploring the intricate intersections between art and technology, a dual focus that has increasingly expanded into critical writing as well. Earlier this year, in April, he authored a detailed piece for Artforum analyzing the prevailing aesthetics of modern defense technology. Just months later, in October, he returned to the publication with an analytical essay examining the intersections of Polymarket, prediction markets, and contemporary philosophy. His deep engagement with geopolitical power structures and technological surveillance dates back even further; in 2015, he represented New Zealand at the prestigious 56th Venice Biennale. For that international exhibition, his acclaimed presentation, titled "Secret Power," ingeniously repurposed commercial internet servers into museum vitrines, displaying leaked documents and visual content concerning the National Security Agency and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance shared by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
More recently, Denny’s ongoing exploration of machine learning and authorship has manifested in physical gallery spaces. His piece Output 0971 (2025), drawn from his ongoing "Machine Painting" series, was recently featured as part of the group exhibition "Sentient Earth" at the Amant art foundation in New York. In an interview discussing that exhibition with ARTnews, Denny elaborated on his fascination with the narratives surrounding artificial intelligence. He noted a deep personal interest in the stories woven by the specific people who build the technologies that everyday populations eventually end up adopting and relying upon.
He further pointed out the pervasive difficulty in distinguishing between corporate mythology and objective truth when society confronts the realities of machine learning. Even for the software engineers and researchers who are actively building these complex systems, the full extent of their capabilities and long-term implications remains unfamiliar territory. This inherent obscurity is precisely why myth-making plays such a vital and powerful role within the modern technology sector, raising crucial questions about how disruptive innovations eventually become familiarized, normalized, and integrated into daily human life.
