Creative artificial intelligence is emerging as a powerful force in our culture, but its consequences are poorly understood and societal infrastructure lags behind. A public understanding of AI is needed. The Intelligent Instruments project signifies a pioneering leap in research about AI through the systematic study of how creative AI is transforming our culture. We take a novel approach to the study of creative AI, where the impact of intelligent technologies on culture is investigated for the first time, through interdisciplinary practice-based research. Using music technologies for this research is ideal as they represent some of the most sophisticated technologies in all periods of human history, imposing a heightened design challenge compared with common industry standards, but critically because of people’s affection with music and its instruments.
The Intelligent Instruments project seeks to foster a public understanding of AI. The pressing question in European AI research is: how do we build public trust in AI technologies? But trust builds on experience, familiarity and understanding. It is urgent to develop a new public discourse on creative AI but this cannot originate in isolated marketing departments of commercial software houses or individual university labs: it has to emerge from people’s actual experience! Through a collaborative methodology involving a range of other scientific fields we develop a new humanities-based theory of creative AI, build the foundations of a shared discourse and ethos around human-centred AI design, and define principles of ethical design of services and products.
In order to achieve this goal, the objectives of the project are to create musical instruments imbued with new artificial intelligence and explore its effect on musicians, audiences and the general public. We do this through various methods, for example participatory design with composers and musicians, workshops with instrument makers and musicians, user studies of new instruments, concerts and participation in public events, and public presentations. We have built a technical infrastructure for the experimental humanities that enables interdisciplinary scientific collaborations and in this area we collaborate with visiting artists and scientists to further our project.
Our aim is to generate a discourse around AI, promoting new understanding and embodied experience of AI amongst the general public. By so doing, we are able to discern and analyse the emerging discourse around creative AI, embodied AI and AI as part of our cultural sphere.
