Workshop 2: Caroline Sinders, ‘In Defense of Useful Art: How art allows for confrontation, exploration, and systematic problem solving’

Caroline Sinders (Independent / London College of Communication) presented her paper ‘In Defense of Useful Art: How art allows for confrontation, exploration, and systematic problem solving’ at the second AEOLIAN workshop ‘Reimagining Industry / Academic / Cultural Heritage Partnerships in AI’ on Monday 25th October 2021.

Abstract: Can artwork be useful, can it be productive, and can it be a work of activism? Sinders’ artistic output can take the shape of a white paper, a civil society action, a design to solve a solution, a social justice workshop, an article, or an artwork artifact. However, she considers all of these outputs to be a form of artistic practice and research practice. For the past few years, Sinders has been looking at the impacts of artificial intelligence in society. Some of this work has taken the shape of lectures and workshops on data, surveillance, and AI, numerous articles on the harms of AI, the Feminist Data Set arts research project, and a new project recognizing human labor behind artificial intelligence systems. Her current project named TRK or Technically Responsible Knowledge is an open source project that examines wage inequality and creates open source alternatives to data labeling and training in AI. TRK is an alternative, open source tool for dataset training and labeling, a time consuming but integral aspect of machine learning that must be completed in part by a human. The tool offers a wage calculator that helps visualize a livable wage to those that will then be responsible for completing the tasks. TRK is a part of the Feminist Data Set Project, using intersectional feminism as a framework to investigate each part of the machine-learning pipeline for bias, inequity, and harm.