The Arts and AI: New Perspectives

By Beth Jochim, Creative AI Lead at Libre AI

"How AI and Art Hold Each Other Accountable" offers some insights into the possible roles that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Art can play together.

The article, which was featured in the blog of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) — where Dr. John Etchemendy and Dr. Fei-Fei Li are Denning Co-Directors — presents persectives and ideas on how the above-mentioned fields can help in the development of better technology.

These areas appear to share a valuable relationship. In fact, as stated by one of the Associated Directors of HAI, Professor Michele Elam, art and tech “are more often mutually informing and holding each other to account” [1]. This is explained by the fact that on the one hand an artistic practice that uses AI technology can help to discover inequalities and problems that our society is facing; on the other hand new technologies are redesigning the very concepts of art and artist. Therefore, applications and technologies that employ AI are not only tools in the hands of the artist.

As explained by Professor Elam, important collaborations are already underway between artists and engineers in the design of products:

“The arts and humanities are informed and motivated by different frameworks and models than profit and can contribute ideas that are human-centered.” [1]

The humanities would be in the position of making an important contribution in redefining what it means to be human in our Digital Age.

Elam's research focuses on the interdisciplinary relationship between social sciences and literature. This approach magnifies cultural interpretations of gender and race, highlighting the fact that racial perception has a major impact on outcomes for social justice, health, and wealth. Her most recent book, titled "Making Race in the Age of AI", uses the arts and humanities as elements to frame issues concerning aspects of equity in the use of new technologies.

Her new course, "AI + Arts + Activism", started in the spring of 2021 and gathered undergraduate students from the humanities and sciences. The idea of the course is to build a collaboration to realize AI-arts projects and show the importance of fostering a constructive dialogue between the two different domains. [2]

References

[1] Jensen, Beth (2020). "How AI and Art Hold Each Other Accountable". HAI Standford Blog. Retrieved from: https://hai.stanford.edu/news/how-ai-and-art-hold-each-other-accountable in October 2021.

[2] Elam, Michele. Personal Page. English Standford Edu. Retrieved from: https://english.stanford.edu/people/michele-elam in October 2021.

Photo (Cover) by Markus Winkler / Unsplash