Abstract

There has been an increasing interest in discussing ethics, sustainability and politics of AI technologies that support and accompany creative processes (Creative-AI). This workshop brings such implications into focus by exploring them through Fictional News Articles. We use Fictional News Articles to cast forward 10 years to imagine the trajectories of the future Creative-AI, and reflect on how and why they may emerge. By writing Fictional News Articles – articles of events that are yet to take place and to be written – we will unpack critical tensions in the advancement of AI over the next decade. The workshop invites participants to develop perspectives and sensitivities on the assumptions, methods, and tools for enabling (and disabling) such futures, with a particular focus on questions of ethics, sustainability and politics, building on prior years workshop on “fictional research abstracts”.

Examples of fictional news articles

Workshop Description

Along with the increasing urgency of discussing the consequences of Creative-AI technologies, there has also been a surge of interest in Design Fiction during the last 10 years both within and outside the humanities. Design Fictions have traditionally emphasised near-future developments, implications and consequences, but what about developments that lie one or several decades into the future? With the aim of discussing how Creative-AI will affect and change society now and in the future, we will organize a fictional news articles workshop on the theme of “Ethics, Sustainability, and Politics of Creative-AI Futures”. What will be the long-term societal consequences of Creative-AI ten years from now – in 2033? This design fiction workshop builds on last years’ ICCC workshop on Fictional Abstracts and redirects this method towards fictional news writing, in order to focus on the narratives, politics, and societal conditions around Creative-AI. It continues the work of the WASP-HS ’23 Fictional News Articles workshop, which was the first time we explored the method. This workshop is future-oriented and will provide a long-term benefit for the CC community through developing sensitivities for critical reflection on how we move forward in the development of Creative-AI technologies in a responsible way. We can begin to unpack the immediate and imagined ethical issues, and we expect researchers to engage deeply with the challenges of AI. We expect to have a similar target audience than last year in the fictional research abstracts workshop: CC practitioners, who are interested in ethical reflection over the emerging Creative-AI technology.

Participating

Prospective workshop participants should apply via email to the workshop organizers including a brief letter (500 words max) outlining the motivation to participate in the workshop and the participant’s background. The workshop aims at 10-15 participants, and will run for 4-5 hours. During the workshop, participants will both write and discuss Fictional Newspaper Articles in terms of the consequences of the (fictive, future) events presented in the articles. Furthermore, the workshop participants will also explore the usefulness of using Fictional Newspaper Articles to critically explore issues around futures, and discuss in which settings this methodology could be beneficial. Participants are required to attend the workshop through Zoom either on-site or online. Thus, participation requires a laptop and Zoom access.

Note: selected news articles and workshop data may be published. By signing up and applying to the workshop, participants agree that the data produced during the workshop may be used anonymously to inform a future publication on the Speculative News Articles Method.

Organizers

• Petra Jääskeläinen (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• Camilo Sanchez (Aalto University, Finland)

To contact the organizers please send an email to ppja(at)kth.se.

Schedule

Below is a preliminary workshop schedule to give an idea of concrete workshop activities:

Related work

This workshop is based on prior Fictional Abstracts and Fictional News Articles workshops in other academic venues:

1. ICCC ’23 Fictional Abstracts Workshop:  Ethics, Sustainability, and Creative-AI Futures
2. WASP-HS ’23 Fictional News Articles Workshop: Ethics, Sustainability, and Politics of Creative-AI Futures
3. SICT ‘22 Doctoral School on Sustainable ICT, Fictional Abstracts Workshop: https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com 
4. Gecko Doctoral Winter School ‘23, Fictional Abstracts Workshop