On artists and the future of AI at PublicSpaces

On June 6th, 2024, I was at the PublicSpaces conference as a panelist in a session titled The Future of AI & the Internet. You can watch the full panel here. Below, I’ve divided my contribution into a set of short videos.

On how AI (so far) has been a headache for me as a teacher, as I’ve had to redesign all of my assessments:

On the importance of artists (quoting Marshall McLuhan who considered artists the antennae of our society, our radar, looking at least a generation ahead), but also making it clear that you don’t need future thinking to see the very real harms of AI today:

On how AI is not necessarily different than other technologies. The problems that come with AI aren’t technological problems, they are political problems. Technology is not the problem, politics is:

On what it would mean for me to have agency over AI and what I would want it to look like. That means thinking about the power dynamics. I want to flip the script and have AI working for me rather than working for big tech. I prefer nature over technology and like AI that help me be in nature, like BirdNet:

On the fact that explainability and transparency in AI systems have no use in unequal power dynamics:

On how to become a better storyteller: ingest better stories, stop looking at any personalized content as it is terrible for your mind: