In the workshop we will dive into the future and imagine how futures of AI Wellness can look like. The future is not written yet, therefore, everything is possible. We invite everyone, with and without prior knowledge, to join the workshop. The workshop will benefit from the junction of community knowledge, expert knowledge and personal preferences. Many narratives on AI describe omnipotent systems, in which one or few actors obtain complete power. In the workshop, we will speculate a counter-narrative with AI Wellness being the central theme. The workshop will be held by the research collective perfectfuturedesign. We’ve developed a framework for collaborative speculative design - a method for deliberating on topics as a group - and are currently hosting the DesignXDiscourse series. The narrative(s) created during the workshop will be visualized and published online (perfectfuturedesign.com/results) after the workshop.
We are quite flexible with group numbers. 2 or 3 participants is the minimum to form one working group. So, any group number above 3 (or 2) will be fine to form working groups. If 30 people attend, we would form groups of 5 participants, which is still a good group size to have decent group discussions. In the end, all resulting narratives will be discussed. Depending on the total group size, the discussion will be more in depth or brief (rather as presentation).
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:We usually let workshop participants directly visualize the narratives they create during the group deliberations. Given the restricted workshop length, we would like to offer to participants, if they like, to contribute to visualizing the narratives from the deliberations after the workshop. The visualizations (in the form of webpages) will be published on our webpage (perfectfuturedesign.com/results). The resulting online visualizations serve as starting point for broader discussions among observers that have not been involved in the deliberations at the workshop. This way, the narratives survive the workshop-deliberations and can provide food for thought for many other people as well. We are currently thinking about how to allow for online deliberations on the published online-narratives.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:The goal of the session is to get people from different backgrounds to engage in group deliberations with people from different backgrounds. In our point of view such situations (group deliberations with people with different experiences, from different countries, having different interests or jobs) are important to find consensus on important issues such as normative questions around AI. We also want to shed light on the fact that the future is not set yet and that especially with regards to online communities and the digital public sphere there’s so much that can be changed. We believe that we as users can also make a difference by raising our voices and expressing how we envision a healthy online space to look like.
Chiara is a research assistant at TUM and was a visiting researcher at KYOTO Design Lab. Her interests include deliberative methods for engaging citizens in the design of AI regulation.
Designer & design researcher (MA Advanced Design, UASMunich) focusing on design applications linking technological development with social & political value systems. Michel currently works at the Institute of Digital Ethics (HdM Stuttgart).