I’ve recently been thinking:
What does it mean to think of Sun Shines Bright as a movement and not as a project. Allowing intersections of practice, research and community. Perhaps by understanding tech, climate and care - we create a space to think about hope!
This week I have been working with students from HEAD Geneve on AI and Climate and Feminist tech. We are exploring where our anxieties with AI lie and where we can find intersection to build some possible works.
Day 1
We talk about AI, various things in the world, general impact and finally how we can think about it differently - talking about feminist and non-western critical frameworks.
On a tldraw page we share things about AI that are exciting and what scares us.
https://www.tldraw.com/f/Gt5zyWCJ94NzpV_y8WWyj?d=v-1002.-449.4789.2354.page
Screenshot of TLDRAW
We also saw some interesting reference for data labour including my current favourite movie, Humans in the Loop (about 70 mins). One of the students (Antony) also shared this very nice journalistic video piece from the New York Times.
Day 2
We started the day with shuffling our seats and making new friends. As the course is an elective there are mixed group from BA and MA and several exchange students (as this was the only other course offered in English!).
We spoke about our interests and where they interact with AI and Care.
a venn diagram of AI/Care/“your interest”
And we also installed and tested local language models on our own computers to understand how they work!
Installing a local language model, with some doubt and some focus.
Laptop stickers, fake news, news humor and a model running offline.
Day 3
We built out our ideas as prototypes. Some were physical, some digital and some conversational.
Paper prototyping
Sketching a prototype on a tablet for project Beta Mother.
Day 4
Two halves.
- In the first half, we learnt how to fine-tune our own models and host them. I have a written guide if you want to try this yourself: How to fine-tune a Model.
- In the second half, we looked for ways to connect the models to our prototypes. We also looked for the gaps, both in what the tech can do and in what our prototypes need.
A paper tree held up in front of a laptop, a physical prototype meeting a model.
Testing the Matter AI prototype on a phone-sized screen.
Day 5
We tried to settle on a final idea for a bot and presented it to our peers.
Final presentations: the whole group gathers around every idea.
Students presents Beta Mother built with SLM
Students presents news manipulation app with SLM
Concluding thoughts
It is important for designers/makers to know how they can open up technology and not just use it. Running a small model on your own laptop, fine-tuning it and seeing where it breaks makes AI feel less like a black box and more like a material you can shape.
Starting from our criticalities we made room for a different conversation about AI, climate and care. That is what I mean by Sun Shines Bright as a movement: small, local, open tools as a space for conversation, care and hope.