“What does AI need from you?”
As people of color, women, the disabled, LGBTQ+, and other vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by data-centric technologies, we must find tangible ways to insert ourselves into the creation, training, and testing of algorithmic matrices that appraise us now and will continue to do so in the future with ever-increasing consequences.
These systems are encoded with the same biases responsible for the myriad systemic injustices we experience today. We can no longer afford to be passive consumers or oblivious subjects to algorithmic systems that significantly impact how and where we live, who we love and our ability to build and distribute wealth. Started by Stephanie Dinkins in 2017 as meetings at NEW INC, a New York based art and tech incubator at the New Museum, AI.Assembly now continues at Data & Society Research Institute as a series of intimate, exploratory encounters. These gatherings make space for lateral-minded practice and thought around intelligent systems where we can think about what AI needs from us and what we want from it. They also work to seed and cross-pollinate broad-based contributions to ethics, equity, transparency, and innovation in machine learning and techno-cultures. Relations between human and machine learning have entered a new phase. Ever increasing computational power, combined with almost limitless data, has led to a turning point in the abilities of artificial forms of intelligence. Artificially intelligent systems are quickly infiltrating our civic and personal lives; the need to assess the implications of human-robot (AI) interaction is more important than ever. Four AI.Assembly Workshops were held at NEW INC (NY) and MOOGFest (Durham NC) from September 2016 - August 2017. An intimate AI.Assembly dinner that gathered ~20 artist, researchers and academic of color and allies working in and around AI was held at Data & Society on November 29, 2018. A larger AI.Assembly convening is in the works for Fall 2019. |
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Past Workshops |
Resources |
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2019: Ford Foundation, Google Code Next
2018: Data & Society 2017: Moogfest 2017: New Inc |
Gaskins, Nettrice. “The Artists Who Are Turning the Tables on Oppressive Technologies.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 26 Oct. 2019, slate.com/technology/2019/10/cory-doctorow-affordances-response-ai.html.
Melenciano, Ari. "Radical Technoculture for Racial Equity." https://medium.com/@Ariciano/radical-technoculture-for-racial-equity-4831ba268bf2 |