Looking Outwards – 11

In Anna Gruaber’s “Women in Media Arts: Does AI think like a (white) man?” Gruaber features different artist/activists and their projects related to AI and feminism. Artificial intelligence is becoming a very important topic in regards to diversity and ethics. Activists have started pointing out problematic prejudices and distortions of supposedly objective algorithms. While there is a low proportion of women in IT professions, the real problem are the biased data sets used in AI and Machine learning.

Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru are activists who investigate the prejudice of AI recognition systems. In this project, “Gender Shades,” the error rate is significantly higher among women; especially those with darker skin. Information about skin color is extremely important in the context of medical applications. 

Mary Flanagan’s project “help me know the truth,” shows that a discriminating algorithm does not come from the sexist or racist nature of the machine, but from the systemically racist structure of our society. “Help me know the truth” creates a perfect stereotype from a digital self portrait based on findings of cognitive neuroscience. 

Caroline Sinders wants to counterset bias. Her project, “Feminist Data Set,” is a multi-year art project that combines lectures and workshops to create interventions in the field of machine learning. Sinders wants to collect feminist data through them. The feminist data inclides artworks, essays, interviews, and books on feminism. The data attempts to introduce data collection as a feminist practice.

https://ars.electronica.art/aeblog/en/2020/04/10/women-in-media-arts-ai/