UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — "AI Dance: The Algo," an arts-based intervention to foster socially aware design of AI (artificial intelligence) technology and policy, and will be held 3:35 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 5, at the Westgate East Atrium on the University Park Campus, as part of Penn State Artificial Intelligence (AI) Week (held April 1-5). The week is coordinated by the AI Hub.
Coordinated by Betsy Campbell, assistant professor and research associate in the College of Education, and affiliate of the Penn State Arts and Design Research Incubator, this presentation and discussion explores the development of a work on social justice in AI technology, design and policy-making that had its debut in 2023 at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
Using data sourced from inter-personal sessions in the U.S., Switzerland, South Africa, China and Colombia, ordinary people were asked to give, and explain, a pose that communicated how they felt about AI in smart cities. The poses, a set of 151 different ones, were then shown to humans and to AI to interpret. According to Campbell, humans were able to understood the original person’s intent and AI did not.
The poses also underpinned an art-based intervention to support social justice in the design of AI technology and policy. Using a computer to randomly select and order 24 moves from the set of 151, this post-modern dance and discussion guide became the foundation of a program used for in-service training sessions.