In May 2022, researchers convened to discuss AI, beasts, and questions of governance. It was a highly interdisciplinary room, and working in pairs, participants were encouraged to create a beast that spoke to a specific issue of governance around AI, as they saw it.
AI is beset with issues of governance. How might conveying them as beasts allow us to name, describe, relate to them differently? Think up strategies for responding, managing, governing? Eight amazing beasts were created and discussed. From these, the coordinating team chose four that would go “on tour” to three of Oxford’s primary schools. They were chosen for the way they could engage students’ imaginations and connect to everyday issues that schoolchildren might relate to.
Students were introduced to four beasts in particular, Everbeta, the Ringler, The Drip, and Sizer.
Everbeta
Everbeta is a beast that is always in beta, never finalized. Beta 5.0 became Everbeta during the process, and its an “unmanageable” monster created by Lachlan Urquhart, a legal scholar of AI in European legislation. It lives in a state of pernament change. It’s a modular beast, that adds and adds new sensint getchnologies and data whenever it can. It’s trying to undersatnd how people feel, because it’s inspired by a AI project that is about AI for emotion detection. Despite its scope for harm and unwieldiness, it is doomed to faiulre because it oversimplifies the human experience and believes emotions can just be read, if it collects enough dat. But it can’t. It continues its plan, even if it is unsuccessful. It is driven by hopes and investment. Humans get frustrated with beta 5.0 as it tells them how they feel but they respond with the idea that it’s more complex.
This first drawing from Lachlan has all the sensors on it. It has data on its feet and it’s weighed down. It has a an on off button for the nose. It was inspired by a curret research project
The Ringler
The ringler is a mindless autonoma that tries to link data from different sources. It’s an inference machine, it’s just about connections. In doing so it’s trying to bring information together and make connections but sometimes things are meant to be kept separate. It organises the world’s data for maximal connectedness, enabling both surveillance and behavioural change – though not intentionally. It’s just hungry to maximise network entropy.
The first drawing from the workshop was neural shaped, combining biological and digital imagery, networks being drawn together through its tendrils.
The Drip
The Drip – you *need* the drip – to get a job, to make friends to stay in touch with family, to find a partner, to collaborate, to live through a pandemic, to organize events, to get the news, to be an informed citizen.
The Drip feeds on your every move, what you eat, what you wear, who you date, what you like, who you follow, what your friends like, where your family goes on holiday. The Drip provides a constant stream of information notifications and opportunities if you can afford it. If it keeps you addicted, how do you opt out?
Laura’s first drawing of the drip resembled an IV bag, with an evil looking face. It was brighly coloured, drawing in supplies and scattering out little pieces of reward.
Sizer
Sizer (scale) exists at multiple scales, always on the horizon, unrelateably big and unrelateably small. It belongs to the mythology of AI, existing at these different sizes at once. It is both seen and uncomputed, it is both transparent and opque. Its large scale allows for accuracy, but creates vast amounts of waste. It looms on the horizon of our imaginations and our worlds, but when it gets talked about, it often ends up tkingforms like constellations in the sky. How do we relate to the scale of this beast? And how does its size make it feel entirely ungovernable, out of the scale of the human, beyond our ken?
Gabriele’s first drawing of this beast reached up to the atmosphere and down to the microscopic, conveying the passage of data between these different sites. It borrowed from cityscape imaginaries to create the sense of the ever emerging horizon.