Hi, y’all! Welcome to the weekly update with notions of the news (scroll down) and reflections on what happened. This week on AI and societal impacts.
Last week was packed with events; I joined the AMS scientific conference Reinventing the City partly and attended three fruitful sessions and a conference dinner with good conversations at the table. Next, I attended the NL AIC day (the Netherlands AI Coalition). I did not know what to expect, was curious about the crowd, and found a good mix of education, government, and industry. The general talks -as far as I participated- focused on the possibilities for AI in services and beyond and the still open playing field, with only 4% of companies being AI-ready.
The theme was “collective, people-oriented, and empowering.” I chose to attend a couple of sessions that focused on the societal impact of AI. The bias of generative AI and creating awareness is significant for organizations that deal with general interest. A session on preventing food waste with AI turned out not so much driven by societal goals but more by business goals. It can go hand in hand, of course.
Triggered thought
In a panel discussion at the same NL AIC on AI and society, the first results of the research will be published this week on what people-oriented AI means and the general public’s attitude. There are dangers in the unknown of AI, such as the risk of chilling effects. The second aspect is that opaque power structures can appear; who decides what works and influences the outcomes? The third aspect that the research found is about surveillance and freedom.
It is remarkable and important to note that there is a potential for a new reality in an AI-dominated society that is disconnected from the known agency structures. It can lead to distrust in the systems. It is crucial to think about the right guardrails and literacy for all to judge the systems defining our lives…
It connects to another event I joined, the Poverty Escape. This was a special ‘experience’ connected to an exhibition on Poverty and art at Schiedam Stedelijk Museum. The Poverty Escape is a role-playing workshop where teams have to make decisions on the budget choices for a man who is fighting poverty. It makes you understand the stress and challenges people deal with. There are a lot of issues in the way the support system functions, and sometimes, it worsens situations. I will not go into all the details here. Still, it connects to one of the projects I am involved in now, setting up a program where we try to connect support systems, domain specialists, and the power of design to proactive intelligent digital services in such a way that it is really helping and supporting and not creating stigma and distrust. It is a delicate and essential topic.
From the overall impression of the NL AIC day, I am not sure where the balance lies; it depends a lot on what lens you choose to discuss empowering and people-oriented. The last session I attended at Reinventing the City dealt with the way the municipality of Amsterdam is dealing with citizen participation and AI applications. Creating a framework making AI more tangible for citizens, risk simulations, and blurring as a service. It is promising that the intentions are right. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, or maybe more even before that, in the baking… (sorry for this contrived imagery).
Another triggered thought
I was watching the Rabbit r1 live demo that was part of the handing out of the first batch of devices in a hotel in New York. The first reviews are now in (The Verge, The Shortcut, The Atlantic), and more are to be expected in the coming week.
Apart from living up to the promises, I think there were some interesting concepts presented. The built-in teaching mode, for instance, and the ideas about AI safety and building some kind of scrutiny system (that is something else as privacy architecture that is questioned with this first release by the critics) were interesting.
The new version of the promised LAM (Language Action Model), 1.5, has the mantra to learn physically and act digitally, so it brings back the experience of use in the physical world back into the models that drive the digital behavior. You would expect, indeed, but it is about execution in the end.
There is also popping up a new concept of generative UI—UI that adapts to the user and the specific moment of use. Rabbit is hinting at an AI native desktop they want to provide (as a service?). We saw that concept earlier in the proposed UI for Gemini by oio-studio for Google. I am especially curious about the way Apple will integrate AI in its new OS. It makes a lot of sense that it can leverage this, just like it introduced an adaptive UI for the phone back in 2007 with the app store…
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