Black Mirror: AI, Art, Social Action
ENGLISH 18SC
Freaked out, excited, overwhelmed or even secretly a little bored with all the breathless hype and handwringing over artificial intelligence? Wondering what it all means—if anything--for you? Our class takes a playful but serious look at AI in terms of your own life, studies, and eventually career. Whether your current interests lean towards STEM or the humanities, this seminar draws on both theory and practice to explore how AI is impacting nearly all aspects of our public and private lives.
We will be exploring intersections of STEM, arts and humanities scholarship and practice that engage with these exponentially impactful technologies. Of special interest are the social ethical and artistic implications of artificial intelligence systems with an emphasis on aesthetics, civic society and racial justice, including scholarship on decolonial AI, indigenous AI, disability activism AI, feminist AI and the future of work for creative industries.
So just what has art got to do with it? Cultural narratives shape the public imagination about these exponentially sophisticated technologies, the rapid development of which is already outpacing traditional ethical and governance protocols. Storytelling impacts, implicitly or explicitly, everything from product design to public policy, influencing how people understand identity (racial, sexual, even what counts as “human”), how they interact socially (or not), and how they think a healthcare or justice system should work (e.g. issues with AI chatbots in therapeutic and clinical settings, privacy and data scraping, copyright, name-image-likeness compensation, facial recognition bias, predictive sentencing, et al.).
Too often contemporary narratives about technology range in tenor from the apocalyptic (The Doomsday Argument) to the salvific (To Save Everything. Click Here). Yet there are so many more ways of seeing and experiencing the world beyond the sometimes very limited perspectives of mid-20th century science fiction that inform many technologists’ visions. Engaging with arts theorists and practitioners from disciplines, backgrounds, and time periods, our class together explores some fresh plotlines, images, tropes, identity formations, historiographies and speculative futurities. We will examine both AI-generated art as well as arts’ take on AI.
Art may challenge the Silicon Valley start-up mentality of “size, speed, scale, quantification” but AI is also challenging the professional art world status quo, challenging aesthetic norms and valuation (what counts as ‘art,’ what counts as ‘good’ art? Even who/what can make art?) What is the impact of art on health and well-being, the new neuroscience about the “brain on art”? We will bring the study and practice of the arts in the broadest sense (literature, theatre, performance, film, music, media, visual and graphic art) to advance our understanding of the ‘human’ in human-centered AI.
Our class will be discussion-based and experiential; we will be both in and out of the classroom in some of the many exciting arts and tech maker-spaces on and off campus.
No experience in STEM or humanities/arts fields required. Just come with humility, curiosity, and an open mind.
Examples of Potential Field Trips and Guest Speakers
Potential Field trips off-campus include the AI Misalignment Museum in SF, the AI arts exhibits at the SF Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of African Diaspora, Google Arts & Culture Lab, as well as an AI-artist studio in Oakland and a special lunch at Professor Elam’s home. On campus trips include the Human Virtual Interaction Lab, the Institute for Human-Centered AI, the AI Tinkery in the School of Ed, and other sites where the sciences and humanities intersect. We will host several potential guest speakers from both the arts world and leaders in technology, including Kevin Scott (CTO of Microsoft), James Manyika (Senior VP of Google-Alphabet) and Professor Camille Utterback (McArthur-award winning artist) among others.
Potential Student Projects
Projects can include creative or analytical work with or about AI and can be independent or collaborative.
Meet the Instructor
Michele Elam
William Coe Robertson Professor in the Humanities
Dept of English, Dept of African & African-American Studies
Senior Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered AI
Michele Elam is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English Department at Stanford University, Former Associate Director and currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a Race & Technology Affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Former Director of African & African American Studies, Elam is also affiliated with d. school, Symbolic Systems, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and with the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute. Elam’s research in interdisciplinary humanities connects literature, social sciences, and STEM in order to examine how shifting perceptions of gender and impact outcomes for health, wealth and social justice. Her most recent book project, Race Making in the Age of AI, considers how the humanities and arts can frame and address urgent social questions about equity and justice in socially transformative technologies.
Dedicated to teaching, Professor Elam has been awarded many teaching awards including the 2018 Walter J. Gores Award, the University's highest teaching honor. On a personal note, Professor Elam has two very fluffy cats she looks forward to introducing her students to!