Chilean researchers, including Claudia López, a professor in the Computer Science Department, are reflecting on and anticipating the impact that this technology will have in the future.
USM Communications.- Creating knowledge from the south, the territory and the communities around the uncertain effects of Artificial Intelligence is the central proposal presented by the Millennium Futures of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), an interdisciplinary research and creation group that will seek to imagine , understand and transform the capabilities of these technologies to make them more democratic and participatory. What is sought is to try to answer if it is possible to design alternative futures from Chile, placing the following question: What aspects of social life cannot be delegated to artificial intelligence?
Although this technology (AI) emerged as one of the greatest promises of prosperity for the society of the future, its rapid advance also opened up new ethical controversies associated with the exacerbation of the digital divide, the impact on the environment and its effects on the world. work, health and education. In this sense, FAIR’s invitation is to reflect and anticipate the impacts that this technology will have in the future, but from a Latin American, experimental perspective and in connection with the situated territory.
“Inaugurating this project on the Futures of Artificial Intelligence at the Chilean Pre-Columbian Museum is a way of remembering that we cannot understand the future without recognizing our territories and our local practices. There is no possibility of an inclusive, sustainable and ethical future of artificial intelligence if we are not capable of dialoguing with the multiplicity of forms of intelligence that inhabit and design our territories, which have often been denied and forgotten”, pointed out Martín Tironi, director of the Millennium FAIR and the School of Design of the Catholic University.
In this scenario, the main researchers of the center —Tironi together with Wolfgang Bongers (UC Letters), Claudia López (USM Informatics) and Teresa Correa (UDP Communications)— propose an alternative to the celebratory and fatalistic views of future AI scenarios. to, instead, understand and anticipate the transformations and impacts of these technologies, recognizing their potential benefits and ethical limits. In particular, they will focus on addressing the social, cultural, and environmental challenges of AI in Chile and Latin America, considering not only the technological progress it enables, but also its contexts of use and the instabilities it generates for life on the planet.
“We want to understand what is behind the ideas and thoughts of the people who develop and make decisions about artificial intelligence, and that is why it is so necessary to unite knowledge from letters, from artistic studies, through communication, because of how people conceptualize artificial intelligence, even being able to prototype and try to test those new artificial intelligences that we are going to imagine”, pointed out the FAIR researcher and professor of the USM Department of Computer Science, Claudia López.
Transforming the Culture of AI
The launch of the FAIR Nucleus brought together close to 200 people at the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art around an experience that brought together the history of the place with the artistic intervention of Felipe Rivas San Martín and his “Nonexistent Queer Archive”, the algorithmic proposal- musical by the Orchestra of Poets and a masterful talk by the expert in Digital Humanities from King’s College, Mercedes Bunz.
The author of “The Silent Revolution: How Algorithms Changed Knowledge, Work, Journalism, and Politics without Making Too Much Noise,” reflected on how digital technologies have shaped our society and how Artificial Intelligence has the potential to further transform our ways. of life. In addition, Bunz highlighted the importance of public infrastructure in Artificial Intelligence, a space that the nucleus comes to complement, especially to investigate the sociocultural implications that the adoption of these new technologies entails.
In this sense, Carolina Gainza, Undersecretary of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation, highlighted that “the FAIR Nucleus is very important for the country because it promotes transdiscipline (…), here we find researchers from engineering, humanities, social sciences, letters and arts. This is unprecedented and, at the same time, an example that we must follow”.
One of the areas that has been little studied and that is beginning to be explored is “the myth of the dematerialization of Artificial Intelligence”. In this sense, the researchers problematize what the true materiality is in aspects such as the environmental costs of these technologies (it is estimated that by the year 2040 the storage of digital data will generate 14% of global emissions) or the role they play in the production of cultural imaginaries.
About FAIR
The FAIR Millennium Nucleus is an interdisciplinary research center that has the financing and support of the Millennium Science Initiative of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), which seeks to question the sociocultural implications of AI from Chile and Latin America, creating spaces of collaboration, learning and experimentation that foster crossovers between humanities, sciences and arts.
