Technological Bias

Gretchen Andrew (read about her search engine art)
Gretchen Andrew
bias tech through the ages
"technology should be the ultimate equalizer, it should serve everyone's needs without an inherent bias" — VOX

How computer vision used to work...

traditional programming 

  // bouncer bot algorithm
  let ages = [ 16, 48, 27, 17, 32, 25, 57, 35, 68 ]

  for (let i = 0; i < ages.length; i++) {

    if (ages[i] >= 21) {

      say('Welcome to the bar!')

    } else {

      say('You are too young, go away!')

    }

  }
Chess champion Garry Kasparov looses to Deep Blue, a "symbolic AI" system (ie. good old-fashioned AI)
deep blue

...how computer vision works today

Go champion Lee Sedol looses to AlphaGo, a Machine (Deep) Learning AI system
Machine Learning (Artificial Intelligence)
teachable machine

other examples of Machine Learning

"As AI progresses, the great promise is that these machines alongside of us are able to think, imagine and see things in ways that we never have before. Which means that maybe we have some new, weird, seemingly implausible solution to climate change, maybe we have some radically different approach to dealing with incurable cancers. The real practical and wonderful promise is that machines help us be more creative and using that creativity we get to terrific solutions." — Amy Webb
AI Radiologists
AI Truck Drivers

Uncovering Machine Bias

Joy Buolamwini
"The coded gaze reflects the priorities, preferences and prejudices of those who have the power to shape technology" — Joy Buolamwini
"Scores like this — known as risk assessments — are increasingly common in courtrooms across the nation. They are used to inform decisions about who can be set free at every stage of the criminal justice system, from assigning bond amounts — as is the case in Fort Lauderdale — to even more fundamental decisions about defendants’ freedom. In Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, the results of such assessments are given to judges during criminal sentencing."
— propublica
Julia Angwin

what are/can we do about it?

"there's not one final outcome of AI, there's a distribution of all possible outcomes. We're in a position right now where we can effect whether it evolves positively, in ways that help people, or in ways that overlook people, in ways that amplify human biases."
— Margret Mitchell
Margret Mitchell
Timnit Gebru

how are/can artists use this technology?

this person does not exist
ai generated person
runway, machine learning software for artists
AI as digital muse
While programs like Runway can be used to generate finished works or assets, AI could also be a brainstorming or collaboration tool, less the product and more part of the process. If you're a writer try playing with Open AI's GPT-2 model, or check out this experimental collaborative drawing tool by Andy Matuschak.
Other AI Art Projects

Interesting Data Sets you can use to train AI models

bird sounds
whale sounds

Processing/P5.js

Machine Learning with ML5
To train your own models and use them in P5.js (Processing) check out Google's teachable machine tools and the ml5.js library.