Hi all,

Continuing with AI

Here are some topics being discussed:

  • Copyright, Opensource, Scraping
  • Algorithmic Bias / surveillance
  • Environmental concerns
  • Future unintended Consequences/Paperclip problem AI and the paperclip problem/Singularity
  • Labor/Employment
  • Governance/Competitive advantage – Regularity capture

Last year Biden issued a non binding Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

A European approach to artificial intelligence

Moving away from concerns about content produced by AI – I would like to discuss two issues that are also critical in the AI ecosystem: The environmental concerns and Labor issues.

Why We’re Endorsing the AI Environmental Impacts Act by Tamara Kneese – https://datasociety.net/

NYT: A.I. Frenzy Complicates Efforts to Keep Power-Hungry Data Sites Green

Digital Labor: Mechanical Turks and the culmination of human machine collaborations.

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Meta’s Sama – Inside Africa’s Sweatshop

The Gig Economy

You

Propaganda, Fake news – Misinformation and Disinformation

Mind Over Media by Rennee Hobbs
Propaganda is responsive to changes in culture, technology, and society ch1

Group work:

Using some of the formula discussed in Hobbs create a propaganda campaign to present to the class. Make a poster using Stable Diffusion.

I will give each group a theme to consider.

Disinfo Discussions: The Fundamentals with danah boyd

Midterm Project

Loosely based on Kate Crawford’s Anatomy of an AI System , your midterm is a research project in which you create a multi-modular project such as a web site, video essay or podcast that provides a “map of a technological object” of your choice. Trace its production and development as you consider its environmental sustainability, the physical labor and digital labor practices involved in its development, and its ethical relationship to the end user and society at large.

Deliverables include: the media project and a written component 

  • Production/materials/labor/
  • User experience/governance/ethical relationship to user and society/digital rights/historical roots/evolution of object/etc.
  • Sustainability/recycling/right to repair/

Homework

  1. Please come up with an idea for your midterm project: The Life Span of a Technological Object. Write a paragraph about your idea and why you are choosing and what the media modular you plan on making.

Anatomy of an AI System

Ai Anatomy Map

The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources

By Kate Crawford 1 and Vladan Joler 2

(2018)

Data Brokers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)