😎Week 02 | Sep 16

"Truth, dare, spin bottles / You know how to ball, I know Aristotle..." -- Taylor Swift, So High School

IN CLASS

Plato using an iPhone as a red figure Athenian vase painting, Midjourney

ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE DISCUSSION: IS ALL ART DECEPTIVE? WHAT IS A REAL OBJECT?

• Discussions

  • Alex: Plato discussion

  • Alex: Chair project with Kosuth
  • Carla: Deepfake Taylor Swift Chinese clip and AI-Generated 'Swifties for Trump' Photos Prompt Taylor Swift to Endorse Harris
• Demos

  • Carla AI Buffet: Deep Fake Edition
• Crits (Carla & Alex)

• Open Work Session (if time remains)

  • Use one of the generative tools to make something that argues about its own “realness”

ACTIVITIES 02

• WRITE a two paragraph response [post to the Discord, also share as a doc in your folder on the class google drive] two of the following (you can pick two contradictory opinions and compare, or two pieces that reinforce each other-- fine either way!) and post it on the Class Discord:

  • Ted Chiang New Yorker Article on "Why AI Isn't Going To Make Art"
  • Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst: New Yorker Article
  • Ezra Klein Interview with Holly Herndon
  • This overview of current AI case filings, where you can click through to detailed descriptions of the legal grounds for each case
  • LAION-5B, Stable Diffusion 1.5, and the Original Sin of Generative AI by Eryk Salvaggio on TechPolicy.Press (specifically addresses images of child sexual abuse (CSAM) in the dataset and their consequences)
  • The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts by Shaolei Ren and Adam Wierman in the Harvard Business Review
  • Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar (short news factual article that pairs with above)
  • Data Workers’ Inquiry -- a look at the human costs of producing AI front end services

    • Specifically: read some of the testimonies, videos, and more from workers themselves, many of whom produce the datasets AI products use directly.

HOT TIP: Run out of free articles on a publication website like the New Yorker? Open a new incognito window in Chrome or spoof an IP in a VPN to get access! NYU has these publications in databases but they're often a few weeks behind.

• CREATION 02 Deep Deepfake