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.

This workshop seeks to take a step back and ask what it means to be human, what it means to be machine and how we can creatively and meaningfully combine and collaborate. Through a range of prototyping exercises and the creation of your own chatbot the workshop will explore the potential for ‘creative disruption’ in a range of living lab contexts. Let’s explore – what humans and AI can do differently and better together, and how this can be an open participative process embedded in real communities and addressing everyday issues.

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

LINKS

Workshop Facilitators