Week 10: Different Cliché for AI
Task: Design a different cliché for AI. What would happen if you used a totally different palette? No blues and blacks? No translucency? What happens if you use a different strategy? What if its materiality were more like wool? Or a cup of tea? Whatever it might be, play with it a little and then make one image that expresses AI and explain your choices.
It seems like we have formed a strong stereotype on Artificial Intelligence(AI).
As Molly suggested, the images that I could find when I typed ‘AI’ in Google image search engine all look similar, especially in shapes and colors. I extracted colors from the images and the variation of color usage could be easily summarized into these 5 colors; light gray(or white), three types of blues, and black(or dark navy). And these colors and shapes are quite familiar with me when I think of AI.
Then I found several representative AI-related movies. Their posters are composed of similar colors that I found above, except one, movie ‘Her’.
Then, why people generally visualize AI or robots in black and white, or cool tone colors, such as gray or blue?
AI or algorithm is a kind of programs or software originally written in numbers or codes which can be difficult to calculate concepts that cannot be quantified, such as emotions or feelings. These ambiguous and complex things make humans more human-like and complex. Thus, AI which is regarded as perfect makes a huge contrast with humans. This perspective may influence people to visualize AI in different or opposite tones of colors of human beings.
AI never fears or loves something because it does not feel pains. AI is never embarrassed because it already has considered all possibilities rapidly and what it has to do is just making a decision following a specific logic. AI is free from space and time constraints. AI also does not have to eat, sleep, or take a rest. According to these characteristics, it seems natural to correlate AI with the next adjectives; logical, reasonable, efficient, unemotional, strict, rule-based, and cold.
What colors can be more appropriate other than those above to visualize them?
Different Approach to AI
When I started to think about how to give a new form to AI, it reminded me of the project of Communication Design Studio, ‘Make the Abstract Concrete’. This project is about visualizing an abstract concept to understand easily utilizing forms(shapes and colors), motions, and sound effects. AI does not have physical or concrete appearances, which makes it difficult to depict.
I tried to think AI as one of the alive species. Humans have conducted numerous trials to create new organics or animals by manipulating genes and AI could be one of them, even though the process might be completely different. Just like others, in the AI species, numerous AI individuals will exist. They all might have different characteristics, personalities, or tempers, just like human beings. However, I started with trying to define their common characteristics.
Shy / Introvert: The one common personality of AI species that I found was ‘shyness’. AI individuals usually live in the backend world and never expose themselves to the outer world because they are too shy or introvert.
What they show is the information that we requested or the masks(interfaces or visual forms) that we designed for them to put on. They are living and working inside of our smart devices, just like this monster of the movie ‘Man In Black’. I thought shyness is more related to behaviors so that I interpreted this characteristic into shapes rather than colors.
Curious: AI does not feel tiresome of acquiring knowledge, and I analyzed that it is because of their huge ‘curiosity’. They learn anything at a fast pace by collecting data and never forget what they have learned until they die. Curiosity can be visualized into yellowish color, according to Emotional Equations by Chip Conley.
Kind / Generous: AI species are kind and generous so that they do not mind to share what they have learned. Whenever we ask them to give some information about something, they gladly teach us. I thought this personality can be visualized into warm and soft colors/textures. Also, it might be closer to curved, soft or flexible shapes rather than strict or sharp shapes.
This is my own visualization of AI. AI individuals are so shy that they stay back of the screens or inside of the devices which have strict and solid rectangles. They see and communicate with our world through gaps between these rectangles. I used colors in a yellow range to show their curiosity. In order to demonstrate their kindness, I used circular shapes and gradient colors that fade out edges.
Readings (the Hurley and Courtland are about the AFST):
- Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression, 2018, chapter 1
- Dan Hurley, “Can an Algorithm Tell when Kids Are in Danger?” New York Times, January 2, 2018.
- Rachel Courtland, “Bias detectives: the researchers striving to make algorithms fair” Nature, June 20, 2018
- Mimi Onouha, “The Point of Collection,” Medium.com, 2016
