Critical Bestiaries of AI: Reimagining Monsters

The Bestiaries Project is collaboration between the Wellcome Centre for Ethics & Humanities at the University of Oxford and the ETHOS Lab at the IT University of Copenhagen. The project's goal is to bring publics' attention to aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that require oversight and regulation. We will do this by creating an AI bestiary , a collection of AI beasts or monsters representing areas of AI technology that are in need of governance. Teams of Oxford researchers who work on AI from various perspectives (for example, those who create AI-based computer programs, or who look at ethical and social implications of introducing AI in society) and monster studies will create the bestiary during a facilitated workshop. In addition to identifying AI beasts, or areas of AI that are in need of governance, these researchers will develop a series of collages that represent the AI beasts that they have imagined. An artist will facilitate this workshop. This collection of AI beasts will be used as the basis of a public exhibition in the Oxford IF festival. The exhibition will also form the backdrop for a public engagement activity in the festival - the make your own AI beast workshop. This public engagement workshop will be aimed at primary school children and parents and run in a public space within Oxford city centre. Following the IF festival, the Bestiary will be exhibited within the University (for example, the Big Data Institute Atrium). The aim of the Bestiaries Project is engage different audiences - academic researchers, primary school children and members of the public - in thinking more critically about AI and its governance; where the gaps are, and how they can or should be filled.