Slow AI
The Slow AI project seeks to unpack and re-imagine alternative narratives for AI outside Silicon Valley ideologies.
Inspired by counter movements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to subvert corporate-first thinking by collectively researching & practicing new perspectives such as Small AI, Ancestral AI, and Esoteric AI as ways to “imagine and craft the worlds we cannot live without, just as we dismantle the ones we cannot live within” - Ruha Benjamin.
We invited critical AI researchers, designers, creative technologists, and artists to interrogate and publish critical AI discourse through community sessions, webwoven essays, and playful critiques, creating one hot compost pile of anthologies, Miro boards and zines we hope will spark new modes of thinking & talking about AI.
[TEAM]
[TIME]
Jan 2024 - Nov 2024
[FUNDING]
AN INTRODUCTION TO SLOW AI 🐌
Since 2023, AIxDESIGN has been holding the idea of Slow AI and throughout 2024, we dove deep with research, community events, and artist collaborations to expand on what this might mean.
This blog serves as an introduction to Slow AI:
breaking apart the importance of alternative imaginaries of AI beyond the dominant big tech paradigm
our intentions and offerings from AIxDESIGN's Slow AI project
and an extended invitation for all thinkers + makers to keep expanding
SMALL AI
Lead by Nadia NadesanSmall AI questions the dominance of large-scale models by addressing environmental impact, discriminatory language, and cultural preservation. It’s an invitation to use notions of fractals, friction, and fragmented-ness in nature and math to inspire ideas around Small AI and send ripples that shift practices around Big AI. It advocates for equitable, sustainable alternatives, prompting exploration of community-focused governance, and interconnectedness as pathways to more just futures.
In this research we ask: What is possible when our objective is cultural creation and preservation instead of scale or profit?
→ AI for Ants: A zine about Small AI
→ Project D33pthr0at by Gabriella Garcia & Arnab Chakravarty
ESOTERIC AI
Lead by Natalia StanuschEsoteric AI challenges mainstream perceptions of AI as either disenchanted or enchanted, proposing alternative ways of seeing, sensing, and knowing AI that blur the seeming binary of magic and technology. Inspired by feminist philosophy and science and technology studies, Esoteric AI seeks to trouble the normative understandings of AI and reclaim the feminine and the enchanted from the dominant ways they are projected onto AI. Just as a séance is a collective process, so is our reimagining and reenchanting of AI.
In this research we ask: What can we learn from il/legitimate predictive technologies of the past – (feminist) practices like astrology, tarot, Farmer’s Almanac?
→ (Dis)Enchantment: A zine about Esoteric AI
ANCESTRAL AI
Lead by Gustavo Nogueira de MenezesAncestral AI explores natural and cultural temporalities to better understand how we might create alternatives to the culture of Big Tech’s AI development: ‘always-on,’ ‘fast-paced’ or ‘time-blind’. We document and investigate the wisdom of past generations, including time-tested approaches to building resilient complex systems.
In this research we ask: What can we learn from non-western and indigenous governance models, archiving practices, and data-led technologies?
→Past, Presents, Futures: A zine about Ancestral AI
Eager to explore more? Check our miro board
Sprinkle comments, builds, thoughts, and additional links or references throughout the Miro board, and other outputs.
Past Events >>
As a part of our research on Slow AI, we hosted live conversations with experts as well as hands one zine-making session for each of the themes - Ancestra AI, Small AI & Esoteric AI.
