The arrival of general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems, such as ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion, radically accelerated the wide-spread use of these systems across the board. Their applicability to a wide-range of tasks presents a fundamental departure from previous, highly specialized systems. In addition, the streamlined and easy-to-use interfaces for the first time enabled a massive and conscious adoption of AI by the public. GPAI raises fundamental questions across the board ranging from well documented issues, such as bias, privacy, copyright, and transparency, towards unchartered territory, which was up until now the stuff of science fiction.

The evolving role of AI in and through artistic practice continues to be a central topic at the 9th edition of the Forum. Extending past conversations centered around questions of racial justice, surveillance, and the inherent risks associated with the collection of personal data, this year’s focus lies on the impactful arrival of general-purpose and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion in our collective consciousness.

Titled Destabilizing Diffusions, an entire day is dedicated to AI on Wednesday August 23rd. As a continuation of the recent (de)Stabilizing Diffusions exhibition at SAT, the AI-themed day expands interdisciplinary discussions bridging questions of confronting tech’s power, the role of art in the governance of AI, indigenous ways of knowing as acts of resistance, the environmental cost of AI and its gender- and race-based biases.

The series of talks, panels, roundtables and workshops will be followed by Data on the Rocks, an AI happy hour in the reception area of The 7 Fingers.

Apart from Destabilizing Diffusions, AI will be considered throughout the week including its role in XR and its impact on the music industry.

Meet the 2023 Forum speakers and global AI experts who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI.

Dr. Sarah Myers West

Dr. Sarah Myers West is the Managing Director of the AI Now Institute and recently served a term as a Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission. She holds a decade of policy and research experience in the political economy of the tech industry, and her forthcoming book Tracing Code (University of California Press) examines the origins of commercial surveillance. To kick off the Destabilizing Diffusions day, Sarah will provide a thought provoking keynote that offers a material analysis of AI, underscoring dependencies on the exploitation of both material and creative resources by the extractivist practices of corporate power structures. Defying both utopian and dystopian visions driven by the current hype train, she will underline what we need to confront tech power and shape alternative trajectories.

KEYNOTE

Shifting Narratives of AI: Confronting Tech's Power
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
11am_12pm

Capture d e cran le 2023 05 23 a 20 11 32

Raziye Buse Çetin

Raziye Buse Çetin is a creative strategist, researcher and AI ethicist currently based in Paris and Istanbul. Her work revolves around ethics, impact and governance of AI systems. Buse is the co-founder of the AI research, advocacy and art platform Dreaming Beyond AI, which is a space for critical and constructive knowledge and visionary fiction. Her work aims to demystify the intersectional impact of AI technologies through research, policy advocacy and art. Buse will participate in a Destabilizing Diffusions panel discussion, “Resisting unstable diffusions: Art and the governance of AI” that dives into the critical role art plays in confronting tech power.

PANEL
Resisting unstable diffusions: Art and the governance of AI
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
1pm_2pm

Water & Music

Water & Music is a research and intelligence network for the new music business. Vested with the mission to make the music industry more innovative, cooperative and transparent, the organization consistently beats the market on identifying trends in music, technology, and culture through a peer-to-peer approach to knowledge exchange. As a collective, they issue research projects, special events and educational workshops that demonstrate the potential and impact of cutting edge music tech trends.

To date, a significant part of their research has been centered around how creative AI impacts the music industry at different levels, from production and conception to distribution, marketing and monetization. On the Forum’s Future of Music day, songwriter and in-house Water & Music AI expert Yung Spielburg will be moderating the interactive game and roundtable BOT OR NOT, which will investigate the use of generative AI technologies in music creation.

ROUND TABLE
BOT OR NOT: Navigating AI-Driven music creation
Friday, August 25, 2023
1pm_2:15pm

Tiara Roxane

Tiara Roxanne is a (Purhépecha - Tarascan) Mestiza scholar and artist based in Berlin, whose work is dedicated to rethinking the ethics of AI through an anti-colonial and cyberfeminist lens. By taking a multidisciplinary approach, their research on data colonialism interrogates how big data and datamining systems govern a colonial imposition through design and (visual) representation. These datamining practices arise from machine learning and artificial intelligence black boxes that lack intersectional intelligence and Indigenous knowledge. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at Data & Society, they work on developing protocols of trust and safety online with Indigenous communities based in Central and South America. Tiara joins the Forum with a performative presentation on their work surrounding Indigenous ways of knowing as technological haunting, and grammars of gathering.

PRESENTATIONS
Transdisciplinary explorations of AI: Project presentations
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
2:30pm_3:30pm

Yotam Mann

Yotam Mann is a musician and software maker whose career has been dedicated to discovering and unlocking the potential of new technologies for music making. Since studying music and computer science at U.C. Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, Yotam has worked with Grammy award-winning artists, authored foundational software libraries for music production and created instruments and interactive music projects enjoyed by millions. Yotam is the co-founder of Never Before Heard Sounds, an AI music production house responsible for artist-centric projects including Holly Herndon’s digital twin “Holly+”.

Yotam is also the author of Tone.js, a library for making interactive music in the browser and created some of the world’s-first neural net music plugins for Ableton Live. At this year’s Forum, he will participate in the BOT OR NOT roundtable.

ROUND TABLE
BOT OR NOT: Navigating AI-Driven music creation
Friday, August 25, 2023
1pm_2:15pm

Michael Running Wolf

Michael Running Wolf (Northern Cheyenne/Lakota/Blackfeet) holds a Master’s of Science in Computer Science, is a former engineer for Amazon’s Alexa, former faculty at Northeastern University, and is pursuing a PhD in CS at McGill University. He is researching Indigenous language and culture reclamation using immersive technologies (AR/VR) and AI, contributing to the ecology of thought represented by the Indigenous through the ethical application of AI and advanced technology respecting Indigenous ways of knowing. Michael is also the Technical Lead for Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute Mila’s FLAIR (First Language AI Reality) initiative, to enable the next chapter in Indigenous language reclamation thanks to the use of advanced immersive AI technology. He will participate in a Destabilizing Diffusions panel discussion, “Resisting unstable diffusions: Art and the governance of AI” that dives into the critical role art plays in confronting tech power.

PANEL
Resisting unstable diffusions: Art and the governance of AI
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
1pm_2pm

Behnaz Fahari

Behnaz Farahi is an Iran-born, LA-based award winning designer and critical maker. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice from USC School of Cinematic Arts, and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Design, California State University, Long Beach. Trained as an architect, with specializations in computational design, interactive technologies, additive manufacturing and digital fabrication, her practice addresses critical issues such as feminism, emotion, perception and social interaction. Behnaz has developed a body of work that explores the intersection of architecture, interactive design, and artificial intelligence. More specifically, she is interested in how materials can be imbued with AI and computer vision in order to address critical issues such as emotion.

At the Forum, Behnaz will deliver a performative keynote on the Digital Creation and Curation day. Her talk will address the possibility of an empathetic relationship between human beings and their environment, in order to augment human intelligence and sensory experience.

KEYNOTE
Are machines empathetic? Gaze, surveillance and bias in computation
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
1pm_2pm

UKAI Projects

UKAI Projects is a Toronto-based organization that conducts artistic research and prototypes culture for what’s coming, offering evidence that emerging technologies can be turned over to other uses to support the culture(s) of the future. Inspired by their belief in polyphony and the individual responsibility to assemble meaning from the world, UKAI delivers projects that seek to diversify the pool of solutions humanity has to draw upon now and going forward. The UKAI projects team (Kasra Goodarznezhad, Jerrold McGrath and Luisa Ji) will present a workshop titled “From Text to Sound: Building Multi-Modal AI Agents” as part of Destabilizing Diffusions. The session will invite participants to explore rapid advances in multimodality in AI and how “chains” of decision-making and behavior can increase the artistic potential of these systems.

WORKSHOP
From Text to Sound: Building Multi-Modal AI Agents
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
3:45pm_5:45pm

MUTEK Forum would like to thank the partners who made this year’s AI programming possible : Machine Agencies, Applied AI Institute, and Goethe-Institut.

Forum Passports are now on sale at $200 and the Forum Day Pass for Destabilizing Diffusions is now available at a reduced price of $60, including access to workshops.

Get yours at https://forum.mutek.org/en/tickets.

Words: Sarah Mackenzie, Maurice Jones, Cyril Émond-Savard
French translation: Cyril Émond-Savard

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