It is hard to go a day without a new story about AI. Some are positive, such as potential treatments for disease, some negative such as the discriminatory bias in many automated algorithms. We are told that AI can create new jobs as well as replace old ones, but it is unclear whether AI will replace drudgery or just leave this to humans. We are at a time of unprecedented opportunity and threat and sadly the tendency for technological advance is rarely to improve social justice. It is therefore more important than ever that those in academia and the third sector do the things that will not naturally happen as a result of market economics. Part of this is about developing new applications that ameliorate the negative impacts of technology or achieve positive new things to improve the human condition. Part of this is about fundamental AI development, as the trend towards larger and larger AI has both environmental impact and reduces access to AI for all but the richest organisations and countries. If we want AI to enable a more just society, we have to work to achieve this.
This was part of a double bill seminar with Miriam Sturdee, where Miriam talked about sketching in UX design.
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