Creative disruption and Artificial Intelligence
BACKGROUND/HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF THE WORKSHOP
Bristol’s Living Lab, Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), is an arts & digital organisation who’ve been working with people for more than 20 years harnessing the power of arts and digital technologies to create positive social change; applying methods of innovative co-creation. KWMC has been exploring the hopes, fears, myths, and controversies of AI with communities, researchers and artists – particularly its propensity to amplify biases, perpetuate stereotypes and increase power imbalances. The prevalent narratives about AI either pit humans against machines – with AI threatening to take jobs, role and purpose from humans – or AI is found to be failing because it remains all too human, limited by fallible and bias programmers.
MAIN AIM / OBJECTIVE
This workshop will share KWMC’s practice around creative disruption and mixing people, art and tech in creative ways. It will take a hands-on,participative approach to exploring what it means to be human, what it means to be a machine, and the potential for creative interaction between the two.
Through the workshop, participants will:
- Understand more about KWMC’s work with artists and communities,
- Share examples of creative human/AI interaction from their living lab context,
- Undertake a rapid prototyping experiment to develop a chatbot for lab contexts that addresses a particular challenge;
- Collaborate across living labs on creative approaches to AI;
- Identify opportunities for future collaboration and scaling up.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Participants will have:
- Shared some of the ethical and social issues / concerns / fears around AI
- Learnt more about what creative disruption and AI could mean
- Discovered inspiring examples of innovative AI projects using creative disruption tactics
- Understood more about KWMCs creative approach to AI
- Found out how other living labs are approaching AI
- Developed ideas of how to use creative disruption to AI in their own living lab context
- Created a prototype chatbot
- Met future collaborators
- Built relationships and networks to support future collaborations and scaling up activity.
The session will be interactive, full of hands-on learning and fun – an ideal environment for developing and deepening relationships and fostering new networks.
BRIEF OUTLINE / METHODOLOGY
In this workshop KWMC will using a mix of arts-led co-creation processes and design-thinking tools. Participants need no prior knowledge of AI and we aim to create a safe space for shared exploration and learning. The methods will include:
- Ice-breaker activities to help people feel comfortable and connect
- Immersion into the world of human/AI interaction: through examples.
- Introduction to dialogflow – a tool for developing your own AI system
- A design-thinking exercise in small groups using rapid prototyping to identify an issue and develop a chatbot for different living lab contexts
- Presentation of prototypes and reflection on learning;
- Sharing existing resources across living labs and KWMCs future plans
The workshop as a whole will involve a mix of small group and whole group activities, including: discussion, interactive tasks with props, prototyping and collaboration. The time will be well structured to allow for: inspiration and networking, active collaboration, insights and reflection