Knowing AI, Knowing U / AIkonIC

KNOWING AI, KNOWING U and AIKONIC were series of community workshops to explore and articulate public attitudes towards AI and related technologies through creative processes. We worked with two groups in Tower Hamlets, London – KNOWING AI, KNOWING U involved adult clients of the mental health and wellbeing charity MIND, while AIKONIC involved teenage clients of the charity Streets of Growth, which works with young people at risk of diverse harms. Workshop participants articulated their experience through creating fictional scenarios, characters and scripts which were then filmed as shadow theatre vignettes. The resulting short films (linked below) are intended to assist advocacy.

The workshops were collaboratively led by Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel (Ambient Information Systems) and The People Speak. The creative methods and approaches used are described in this booklet, and more detailed reflections are available in this report. This project was funded by Public Voices in AI through Responsible AI UK grant reference EP/Y009800/1.

 

 

KNOWING AI, KNOWING U – Articulating Visions of AI through the Data Shadow Theatre

How do users of health and social care services feel about the introduction of AI? Is there space for chatbots in therapy? How should a participant suffering from generalised anxiety manage their well-justified distrust of a particular technological system? We explored these and related issues in a series of workshops conducted with clients of MIND. Participants varied widely in their experiences of AI – some were unaware of any engagement, while others had daily interaction (with, for example, an ‘intelligent’ body-worn medical device).

Despite this diversity in domain knowledge, the group was united by one factor – they had reached adulthood before ubiquitous computing, and so could easily imagine non-technological solutions to personal and societal challenges. Further, all participants univocally determined trust to be the principal value of any technological system. Several had experienced tech-mediated scams, and many had concerns about rampant harvesting of personal data, particularly by biometric systems at borders and in public space. And all expressed frustration with ‘gatekeeping’ chatbots that increasingly regulate access to primary care. ’Better a rude human than a stupid machine’ was a widely-shared sentiment, though there was ambivalence and even optimism about personal digital assistants and therapy chatbots.

To help participants articulate their personal beliefs and concerns, while creating enough distance from traumatic experiences, we used an array of creative tools and methods, including
– A Day in the Life, in which they mentally revisited every encounter with a technological system on a typical day
– 3rd Person Fictions, in which these encounters were generalised and retold through a fictive persona, and illustrated on a map using drawn and found images and icons
– Vignettes, in which participants worked in pairs to combine their fictions and develop scenarios for short dialogues; these spanned the gamut from poignant to outraged to the laugh-out-loud.
– Data Shadow Theatre, where vignettes were acted out using shadow play, eliciting expressive performance from even the most stage-shy participants. Video of the shadow play was then combined with other elements (sound, images, poetry) into a final collaborative work.

KNOWING AI, KNOWING U – Quotes from Workshop Participants

This is a selection of quotes from participants excerpted from group conversations during a Talkaoke event (a discursive format) and later printed as speech bubbles on acetate for use in diagramming and visual works by the participants.

 

 

AIKONIC – Articulating Visions of AI through the Data Shadow Theatre

How can we create a safe space for non-experts to express their ideas and speculations about the powerful and opaque technologies of AI? How can participation be made fun and also instructive, challenging and also non-threatening? Our response to these questions was to design a workshop series as a film production, progressively introducing media and techniques (drawing, poetry, sound recording, shadow play…) and eventually transforming the workshop space into a film set.

Many of the teenage workshop participants had some experience with AI, either through using ChatGPT as a homework assistant, or other chatbots on social media platforms such as Snap. In contrast, their visions for future AI development typically involved humanoid robots or drones. Our wide-ranging discussions encompassed
– concerns about the veracity and meaningfulness of chatbot outputs
– anxiety about surveillance through personal/mobile devices
– predictions of future humans rendered lazy and verbally unexpressive through over-reliance on technology
– a proposal for personal robots to act as proxies in physical fights
– consideration of how a court for robots might operate.

On set, audio recordings of salient observations and phrases from these conversations were looped and replayed to the participants, who developed and enacted impromptu scenarios using shadow play. The shadow screen shielded them from the direct gaze of the camera and encouraged performance. Variable colour lighting and an overhead (transparency) projector expanded creative possibilities. Additional elements (electronic beats, poetry…) were layered together on set and in post-production to make the final collaborative work.

 

 

AIKONIC – Manifesting Visions of AI through Clay Robots

How do we begin talking about something as opaque and nebulous as AI – while not being constantly distracted by our phones? This question motivated a workshop activity in which teenage participants made their conceptions and concerns manifest through sculpting with air-drying clay (their hands fully occupied!). This had the additional benefit of creating a calm and contemplative atmosphere for discussion, in contrast to the hype and frenzy of today’s media-space. Although all the resulting sculptures took the form of individual robots, they provided a tangible basis for developing conversations about processes and relations, such as property rights in data and machines (including the right to switch off), information hierarchy, accountability of self driving cars, and job loss to automation.

 

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This work drew on an earlier public participatory project AI in My Street? (video documentation), a collaboration with Yasmine Boudiaf to probe attitudes and values around deployment of AI and adjacent technologies in London streets. (In association with the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh & Warwick, and Careful Industries, and funded by BRAID).