Loved cheering on folks at the Responsible Ai UK AI and Robotics Research Awards night with the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub !!
⭐ Really enjoyed the keynotes which provided more then a few brain sparks... I have tried my best to capture them below :)
On what Art can do for AI - flipping the script! (by Steve Benford):
- Art has traditionally excelled at embracing ambiguity, contradiction, and the ineffable aspects of human experience that AI systems struggle to quantify. Perhaps art serves as an essential mirror, reflecting back to AI development what it means to create with intention beyond optimisation.
- Art's relationship with uncertainty is particularly relevant. While AI systems typically aim to reduce uncertainty, artists often deliberately preserves and explores it. I think this tension suggests that artistic sensibilities might help AI systems develop a more nuanced understanding of human interpretation and meaning-making that extends beyond statistical patterns.
- Reflecting on my artistic process — I embrace happy accidents, follow intuitive leaps, and work within constraints— perhaps this offers valuable lessons for AI development that purely technical approaches might miss. Perhaps the future of truly intelligent systems lies not just in their ability to analyse but in their capacity to synthesise in ways that surprise even their creators.
- Beyond passive contribution, artists actively shape how data is collected, organised, and interpreted. Their curatorial decisions—what to emphasise, what to juxtapose, what to exclude—represent a form of embodied knowledge that influences AI development. Unlike randomly collected data, artistically curated datasets can highlight specific human values, aesthetic traditions, or cultural narratives.
On Capacity Loss and Identity (Subramanian Ramamoorthy's question)
- Our answer to the question of 'which capacity's loss would make us particularly sad as we age' reveals what we consider essential to our identity and dignity and invites us to articulate what is core to our humanity, revealing values that might otherwise remain implicit in our daily lives.
- For me, I think the loss of memory would be most devastating—not just factual recall but the autobiographical narrative that gives life coherence and meaning. Without memory, are we still the same person? The continuity of self depends partly on remembering who we were.
- As a musician I also think the loss of creative expression might be most painful—the ability to externalise my inner world and communicate it to others. The gradual narrowing of expressive capacity would feel like a shrinking of the self.
- Finally the loss of recognition—the ability to know and be known by those I love. This mutual recognition forms the foundation of our deepest relationships and connects to our fundamental need to be witnessed by others.
😊 Thank you for the thoughts and congrats to the winners :)
