#E41 AI Exists To Help Artists, Not Replace Them With Samar Younes
About Samar Younes
Samar Younes is a polymathic artist, futures farmer, and a Central Saint Martins alumnus and the driving force behind SAMARITUAL, an NYC-based atelier.
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript.
[00:54] Briar: Hi Samar and welcome to another episode of Hyperscale. Thank you for joining me in Dubai for this live episode.
[01:01] Samar: Hi, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
[01:05] Briar: Tell us a little bit about your background, because as I was doing my research, it is so fascinating to see almost the intersect between art and technology and the likes of artificial intelligence with your work.
[01:19] Samar: Yeah, my background is quite unusual because I initially studied architecture and sonography in London, and then I always was interested in art as a means for social justice and as a way to communicate different causes through public art and installation art. At the time when I went to school, that wasn't really a discipline. So I stumbled upon the world of retail design accidentally, and I thought that could be an interesting platform to democratize art outside of a museum. What if such installation and such art could be within the realm of customer experiences? And that way you can communicate causes and different things within the framework of retail, which makes it a bit more, accessible for most. And that's how I started my journey. I kind of worked for 20 years as an artistic director for various retailers in the luxury space and lifestyle space.
[02:27] Samar: And it was mostly about creating these very kind of immersive storytelling through spatial storytelling and spatial experiences. And because I worked across all mediums, meaning, architecture, styling, experience, senses because the range of things that we did was quite wide. As you know, eventually the intersection of digital and physical was very much the norm in that world and building brands. You have to think of both spaces in a very symbiotic way. So I slowly started to get into the digital space and through that particular intersection I recognized that there is a lack of artisanship and interesting expression through the digital space. And that's how I kind of went into AI to develop a more, what I call artisanal intelligence, which we can dive into a little bit later at the intersection of artificial intelligence. Because having worked with so many artisans, I wanted to make sure that the visceral quality that you find in spaces and in experiences and in artisan and craftsmanship is not lost through artificial intelligence and how those two complement each other as a future medium.
[03:56] Briar: What's your thoughts about all of this controversy with AI and how it's impacting artists at the moment? I saw a photo competition, and I think it happened this year where an AI photo was up on display and it actually won the competition. And a lot of artists pushed back and they actually said, well, you know what, this isn't art. What's your thoughts about this?
[04:23] Samar: Well, my thought is every era has a very fundamental disruptive revolution. If you think of when photography was born as opposed to when we had very still-life realistic paintings, it disrupted the realistic painting industry and it forced the painters to adapt a new genre of painting. That was the birth of contemporary and abstract contemporary painting movement that stepped away from realism because photography replicated realism. Artificial intelligence is just a tool to me. It's just another tool as part of my artist kit, just like I would use a pen, a piece of clay, a computer, it's just like another tool in your arsenal. The difference is, it's sort of as a super intelligence tool that you co-create with. It's not just a passive tool.
[05:25] Samar: And that is a difference and I do feel it is revolutionizing the creative process and artists should use it as part of their arsenal versus worrying about it because there is no way on earth it's going to replace artists because you need artists. You're never going to be able to create really interesting pieces of work even through AI without the artistry perspective, the knowledge of the artist, the taste level, the cultural perspective. It's not just a picture that you create. A million people can create a picture, but it's developing the sensibility of a certain image, whether it is a flat image or we have also 3D AI. We have all types of AI. In the future, there might be also sculptures or all types of stuff. You need to be able to understand how you communicate with it and how it's going to superpower your process and not worry so much about it replacing your process.
[06:22] Samar: And I think it's important that artists' voices and perspective and data are in the mix now, not waiting until the storms dies down because storm is not going to die down. On the contrary their important perspective and their voice is how they want to regulate. It's to be developed in a way that feels ethically right. They'll be left out if they're not involved now. So I think it's better to embrace it as a power to reclaim radical imagination and reclaim your creative power versus worrying about it dwarfing your creativity.
[07:01] Briar: I think that makes a lot of sense. And just even thinking about myself and my thoughts about the future as well as I often say to people, well, listen, we have two choices here. The future is going to evolve whether we like it or not, change is going to happen and we can either sit back and be fearful and be frightened or we can get involved and we can participate and we can be part of its evolution.
[07:25] Samar: Right, absolutely. And I wholeheartedly agree whether you like technology or not, and you don't have to like technology, think of it as more of a companion that's going to be there that you'll be able to utilize as a tool to help you along the way to pick and choose how you want to free up the things that draw you down and give you more space to superpower yourself in a variety of different ways.
[07:55] Briar: What's your thought about society these days? So you spoke a bit about how artificial intelligence is a tool, technology is a tool, and at the end of the day, it's to do... The most important part is the person behind it, the thinking, the concept, the story, however you want to look at it. Do you think that we are doing enough as a society to perhaps be tapping into our creativity? Because I often think that in today's world with algorithms in this very, we're very stuck to our couch, we're very distracted. We've got TikTok and Netflix and stuff like this, I sometimes wonder if we don't give ourselves the chance to sit there in our silence and explore our thoughts, explore our creativity.
[08:45] Samar: I think it's a great question because obviously we're in an era where we are overloaded with information versus have the brain space and the mental clarity to be able to create. And when you're overloaded, typically it affects your creativity because every creative or any person needs mind space, need negative space in order to kind of innovate or create interesting thoughts and idea or be around certain groups of people or within a certain tangible kind of space in order to create. I'm really interested in generative AI because it's so wide as a technology. It reflects us as humans, it reflects the bad and the good because we created, so we created it in our image, we have the good and the bad in there.
[09:37] Samar: I do feel if we focus our effort into how can we reclaim our creativity and radical imagination through that tool, how can we relink to our childlike qualities? The problem is in adulthood a lot of the things that you kind of admire in cherish with kids usually are their fertile imagination, are the ability to imagine better future and imagine like really amazing things. They are super wild in their perspective and we focus so much on civilizing them or unwielding them. And the problem with doing so in adulthood, it creates a lot more rigidity and it affects mental wellbeing and it affects your particular perspective because your perspective becomes about productivity versus creativity and by having that perspective, it dwarves that part of you. That's the childlike within, which is being able to radically imagine.
[10:42] Samar: Now suddenly you have this tool that suddenly you can like take a deep breath and it frees you from a lot of the nitty gritty kind of administrative non-creative work that you're conditioned to do in order to keep order and to function and to be productive. That is something that could be done in a very easy way and be kind of elevated through generative AI. So you can function on going deeper. I don't believe this technology is making us lazier or it's there to make things easier. On the contrary it's our responsibility because we do have this technology that it gives us better work-life balance for the society to evolve and function. It is also there to create more equity across all creatives. So it's going to superpower because it's superpower creativity for people who haven't had the chance to develop certain skills because of socioeconomic construct.
[11:44] Samar: Now they have the capability to do so. So it allows you to go actually deeper and really be able to challenge the things that you kind of always have an excuse to do super-fast. Oh, I can't think of circularity, I can't think of sustainability. There is a deadline. This is super kind of difficult. I don't have the bandwidth to really develop this. Now you really don't have as much of an excuse. So your productivity is more like your social responsibility to dig deeper with that technology versus going about it and speeding out your workflow, which it will, but it's going to speed up your non-intellectual workflow, the stuff that just the administrative productivity kind of perspective workflow.
[12:32] Briar: I think this is a fascinating topic and you mentioned about how as children we have this childlike curiosity, this creativity, and then perhaps it's tapped out of us due to society constructs or whatever it may be. Do you think that we do enough for kids these days in the education space to allow them that space to be creative or do you find that it's perhaps too rigid? Are we educating children wrong?
[13:07] Samar: That's the thing. The framework of how education is now hasn't been updated for a while now. And it is very much embedded in a variety of different structures that are problematic across the board. Either they are colonial and they're like construct or they are very rigid or they're not really kind of thinking of education as a resource for the community. It's thinking of education as a commodity. You need to have it as a commodity in order to educate yourself. The future is more about thinking about education as a resource for the entire community. When you position education as a resource, it becomes intergenerational. It becomes something that's continuous because education is not like this trophy that you just like run to get and then it's done.
[14:06] Samar: Education is continuous learning and if you think of tapping into indigenous community of their perspective on education and how it's like a continuous evolution and how anybody keeps evolving and keep shifting who they are because they naturally shift, you naturally shift over your career about what your focus is and what your passions are. And we tend to put ourself in a box versus think of ourself as these very kind of kaleidoscopic moving identities that are continuously evolving. Because it's tied back to this construct of education that it's something that stops here, I checked that box, I got that degree, and this is what defines me. I don't like to define myself or I keep shifting my title over and over because it'll correspond to what I'm feeling or what I'm into at the moment and it'll keep evolving.
[15:02] Samar: Just like I think the ancient Greek used to think that way where you might start off as a soldier or serve in the community, then eventually become a philosopher and you go through many different layers through your upbringing in your life. Obviously each culture and each generation has something different to offer, but the framework of the future of education, if you think of it as first of all, the classroom becoming not necessarily a classroom that is rigid, maybe it's a third space that might be in nature. Maybe it's like much more connected with learning not only from peer to peer, but also from the environment around you. Being able to connect in a very visceral way from the get go with the planets around you. So that shifting where the classroom would take place, A, and B kind of thinking about it as being able to connect with a variety of people within the community to learn from them in a variety of ways in addition to classes.
[16:03] Samar: But those classes would be structured in a very different way if we think of the future of education, especially with the birth of technology that's going to give us on-demand personalized, really tailored education for a plethora of different people, whether they have a specific learning challenge or a specific interest that they want to emphasize more on. Right now you do have an amazing opportunity to really create this super personalized bespoke experiences that are intergenerational, that account to thinking of a variety of different learning module from a variety of different cultures within it.
[16:43] Briar: I think it's very interesting. I was thinking this the other day about how different children are these days and I'm sure every single generation says this when they look back. I'm sure an older generation said that about my generation when we were growing up, but I look at the children of the people I train with at the gym, and these kids are digital natives. They're on their iPads, like they just stay glued to their iPad for half an hour. They're digital natives. We have, oh gosh, I think it's like over 60 million daily users on Roblox or some crazy amount. Kids these days are growing up as digital natives. So I agree with you. I think we have to very much rethink how we are doing education.
[17:29] Samar: And the classroom because they're digital native, which is great, the classroom has to immediately then be rethought as something that needs to be the anti-digital framework. It will be also digital, but how can, if you think of like a fantasy scenario, think of like Avatar the movie or something like that, where you have a very kind of close interconnection with nature as the environment as well as technology. There is this amazing story my dad used to tell me that his classroom was under a fig tree. That's where they used to all learn as kids and his dad used to tell them the story. I mean they all went on to being like doctors and engineer and what have you. But they learned, a big part of their schooling because it was during that period and during that era it was sitting under the fig tree completely surrounded in nature. And that particular framework, when I even think about it and imagine the variety of different things around them that really kind of also informed everything they know and their resilience and what they kind of took from that particular class as opposed to if it was in a typical classroom.
[18:46] Briar: Where would you say a majority of your inspiration comes from for your art?
[18:52] Samar: So a lot of my art, because a lot of the aesthetic that we're surrounded by is very much dominated by the images that surrounds us, which is the global north. I'm interested in the perspective of the global south because this is where a lot of the future is going to be. And oftentimes the global south is presented from a very biased stereotypical perspective. And as a matter of fact, when I started doing AI to try to pull those aesthetics, I got a lot of the imagery that would come about or super stereotype because it portrays all these cultures through the lens of western, kind of the western gaze. And it wouldn't give you the opportunity to, what if you are actually imagining culture or these particular culture framework through a very different perspective that's equally futuristic and modern, but not through that western gaze.
[19:53] Samar: And that's where I ended up creating over 50,000 images in order to use them as research and be able to beat the bias because a lot of my work is very much intersectional with culture, art, design, and also trying to embed these kind of concept of interspecies a lot. I use a lot of nature and biomimicry, but thinking of inter-species or interplanetary, there's always this kind of odd unexpected, but it's as part of the imagination. Having grown up in a war zone, this is what I use as my lifeline and it's something that I feel enables you to imagine. It gives you the tool to really think about no limitation as far as what you can create visually. So to me, I'm really excited about presenting the framework of the global south and the variety of diverse culture through a futuristic lens that's not your typical kind of western framework. So instead of like Afrofuturism, I would call it more global south futurism or Levante futurism would be a bit more my kind of spiel.
[21:11] Briar: So you mentioned a bit about growing up in a war zone. Can you tell us about your upbringing? Like what was that like? Where was it?
[21:21] Samar: So yeah, I grew up in Beirut and it was during, I'm aging myself, but it's okay, during the late seventies and early eighties. And during that period it was in the middle of the Civil War and you have one war after another that tore the entire region. And I remember very clearly one day, because we grew up in a household, my dad is American educated, he's a doctor and he went to UCLA so all our references at home used to be very much surrounded by American pop culture, whether it's music, whether it's shows, TV. So we were watching the Cosby Show out of all shows and there was a ceasefire so we could technically sit and watch it and suddenly there was this bomb that exploded and there was this bomb that sort of exploded and shrapnel that literally just missed me by like maybe five inches in front of my eyes and hit the wall.
[22:20] Samar: And maybe I was eight, but I consider myself so privileged if you look just relatively of what's happening right now. Because I did have a shelter to go down to and I did have commodities and electricity and a place to escape to. But that particular time was the only time I remember really crying during the war and not really making sense of what's happening or why is the bombing happening, but it makes you much more resilient as a kid. But it also made me, as a creative, kind of go into that space of how can I imagine better futures and better tomorrow? How can I imagine cultural symbiocity and connection through different religion or different kind of backgrounds in ways that feels much more exciting and hopeful versus what I was surrounded by.
[23:18] Briar: These days when it comes to art, what kind of narratives do you think are the most pressing to be told?
[23:28] Samar: I think artists have always been the people who observed culture and really were the very first futurist, if you want to so call it and the first activists because art always reflected in society what society has, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I think right now it's a very odd era because of course you have also a slew of censorship that's also happening with art in general. And it's not the first time it's happened. It's happened during different periods and different movement.
[24:11] Briar: Where are you seeing this censorship in particular?
[24:14] Samar: There is particular censorship right now with a lot of Palestinian voices for instance or artists that are speaking of that particular issue. And if you think of art, art is something that is a tool to communicate for everyone. It's not a tool to polarize, it's a tool for you to question. And it's not the first time I've seen it happen because I was just in Berlin actually a few weeks ago and there was an exhibit that was from World War II and there was a whole room about propaganda art of the Soviet era. And it was so interesting how different eras used to either destroy art or artists that didn't really like, specifically during fascist regimes, not all regimes, but during fascist regime that would destroy it and they would have a very predominant type of art that was very much in cahoots with what's happening, what the status quo was, what was acceptable.
[25:24] Briar: They used to do that with libraries as well, didn't they? Just burn the whole library?
[25:28] Samar: Totally. But now it's a very odd era for this to emerge because we're in a very global culture. We're in a very, we think of ourself as a very forward thinking liberal culture. So having this framework happen is very shocking to the entire art world on both end of the spectrum and for all religion and all sides. I have friends across the entire spectrum from all different backgrounds whether they're with this or that and they all feel equally the same. It's one medium that you cannot censor. I do feel the more you try to repress artists' voices, the more they're going to emerge and circumvent whether it's creatively circumvent the algorithm because this is the new kind of censorship tool or creatively go about speaking or communicating in ways that still kind of keeps the integrity of their art and their work or what they want to say.
[26:34] Briar: So Big Tech, obviously they're the ones that that control social media. What's your thought about the fact that they can even decide what should or should not be shared or censored?
[26:49] Samar: It's so difficult because we all throughout, all the people that really are interested in futures and technology were really attracted to the metaverse and Web3 because of the idea or this utopian ideal of a decentralized community or a decentralized world that bottoms up versus tap down, where everybody has like an equal share and not all profit and not all control is at the top of the chain. And there was like this equality and very much with power comes control, comes all these types of things and it's very difficult to, because you see the bias even with the emerging technology like AI that is developing. You can't really do much about it. You can just try to outsmart it and keep reimagining because the future I feel is going to be very much about subcultures and sub-communities outside of the dominant one social media for all.
[27:59] Samar: It's bound to happen, it's already happening on discord and it's just going to continue happening with a variety. Now that we're going to have AI, now you can create your own app and you could create your own tools like ChatGPT and there's going to be way more. They're bound to be like all these smaller subcultures that are going to emerge. They're really interested in a decentralized aspect where the entire community is equally okay with what's being shared. And it's co-owned by the community where it's also gives space to all voices including marginalized voices, including elders and younger and indigenous, any voices that is not typically represented within the framework of what we have now and not always kind of put within the machine of algorithm for profit or for commercial advertising kind of dollar amount at the end. It's bound to bust, you know, it's just a matter of time.
[29:06] Briar: I think it's been interesting to watch social media's evolution and I've been working in the space for a good nine years now. It started off as being a very social kind of platform. We used to upload packets of chips, our favorite chips on Instagram or grainy photos. People weren't so particular I guess about what went out there, it was a lot more creative. There was a lot more community. You used to get 700 likes for your chips for God's sake.
[29:38] Samar: The nineties era, that was like the best.
[29:40] Briar: Oh yeah. MySpace. Gosh, I loved my MySpace photo. It was purple and huge. Anyway, but these days it very much feels like everybody's trying to be an influencer. It feels very much like the social aspect is gone. It just feels like people are just chucking stuff out and it's lost all kinds of authenticity. It feels very fake is the way that I see it. You spoke about the community aspect in these little indie, I guess social media things. Do you think that's how it's going to evolve? Do you not think it's going to be something like maybe like Roblox or some kind of massive platform where the younger generation is hiding these days?
[30:27] Samar: I don't believe it's going to be a massive platform. I think the need for validation has driven a lot of the youth culture in general and the validation that has been driven by the likes and the algorithm has been the social currency. The shift that I'm seeing is the currency of the future is more about authenticity. There is a lot of smaller counter-movement to this very polished, ultra-curated. That's why TikTok, for instance, became so popular because it's the antithesis of the super curated Instagram. Although I veer towards Instagram because my perspective is naturally curatorial, but for many people it's not naturally curatorial or not naturally within an aesthetic framework and that's okay. I think the problem is when a platform forces you to perform or reward you or validates you only based on its metric or my vision for the future is that all social media will be decentralized and interoperable.
[31:38] Samar: So for instance, people go to your website, you will be hosting the different social media within your website. So you will have your own way to be able to showcase whether you are on Instagram, Twitter, Discord or whatever within your own universe. You have the capability to curate your own world and it's all interoperable and they're all connected. You don't have to reinvent the wheel and recreate different profiles. You're no longer at the service of the platform. The platform becomes dormant. Think of it as Stripe, you know the stripe payment?
[32:12] Briar: Yes.
[32:13] Samar: Where it's not dominant, it's just facilitating a transaction. To me, the social media platforms of the future are just going to facilitate a transaction where based on your needs you're going to have all these other tools that are kind of in the background facilitating what your universe might look like. So if you want people to shop secondhand instead of sending them to a platform that's secondhand, but you have your wardrobe that you want to sell, instead of sending them there, everything will become hosted within your own universe. So your universe will host all the stuff that you love and your likes and all these platforms will be there, but they'll be dormant and interoperable. That will be the ideal future that I foresee and I think a lot of people want because it is more in control of the individual rather than the mega powers controlling everything about it.
[33:08] Briar: I think that's a very interesting concept and when you were describing it to me, I almost pictured like an AI avatar or a metaverse if you will.
[33:18] Samar: Or a digital twin could be there. Yeah, exactly.
[33:21] Briar: Totally. And then from that you've got all of these other worlds. I've got a fashion label on Decentraland. I released it for the world's first Metaverse Fashion Week, which gosh must have been about two and a half years ago. And the thing that grounds my gears, like really annoys me, is the fact that I can't take my fashion anywhere else. Here I am talking to digital designers and being like, hey, can you do something from Roblox? But oh gosh, if we're going to make it for Roblox then the fashion's going to look quite basic because these Roblox look like little square Lego humans, whereas if I put it on Spatial.io, I can do something fantastical and made of fire and so creative. So being able to own things and take them within things sounds really cool. And something that really annoys me about social media these days, especially working in the space is that if we're producing something for Instagram for a client, we then have to render it in a different way for YouTube and LinkedIn and customize it for each of the platforms. It just seems ridiculous.
[34:21] Samar: Exactly. And this is what I mean, this is just like busy work. You don't need to do that. You're completely diluting your capability to actually create work that's meaningful by just adapting and having to change it and render it or kind of position it to be able to fit that particular status quo within that particular platform. And because the future being more a combination of spatial computing and physical world, now we're obviously still bound by the hardware but once the hardware is no longer an obstacle, digital fashion and your wardrobe, everything is going to be much easier to be accessible and be seen. Now you're going to struggle by having other kind of places where you're going to put all your digital goods. How are they going to go from all these different platforms? I think it was a great test when Instagram launched threads because everybody brought their followers along. It was like an easy transition and that's how it should be I think across all platform where literally everything kind of transitions very easily, but everything caters to you as an individual versus the other way around.
[35:39] Briar: What about data? I guess that brings me onto my next point. Obviously we've got Instagram, we've got threads, we've got WhatsApp, we've got Facebook. I remember it must've been about three years ago, I downloaded my Facebook data. Oh my God, don't do it. You're better off just not thinking about it. I was horrified about all of the conversations that it had, all of the messages I've ever sent anybody even at university however many years ago when I was just a little bit weird. Do you think we should be worried about data in today's digital world? Is this something that's going to become even more worrisome?
[36:14] Samar: I mean, I think it's interesting. I think a lot of our data and social media, it's almost like the digital journals of modern day. We always used to have our own intimate journals or our own little letters and such that used to be sent. And although those weren't accessible to the world, now there is a high possibility that they might be. So there is a big shift in terms of the idea of our thoughts and our personal kind of playgrounds. Our mind playgrounds are now no longer our own, they're shared playgrounds. And there are two things about this that are tricky because you are much more mindful now in terms of what you share and what you don't share than when it first started.
[37:08] Samar: And just like with AI with the internet, when it first was born, we had no idea where it's going to go and how much we shared and what we didn't share. We were completely blindsided. And now the era of AI comes along and we're pushing data on it as well, but we're much more mindful as far as how that can be harnessed or leveraged. All our data is already out there as far as from our credit card to anything that is your information, whether it's your ID information or your metrics or whatever that might be. As soon as you're connected to some device, whether you're working out and it's connected to an Apple device or you are browsing an online shop and there is that entire data, everything is already being tracked.
[38:02] Samar: What we need to be much more mindful of, not being so concerned about that go with the flow with this, but be mindful about what we want, be much more kind of editorial as far as what we want to put out there and have conversations in real person, like in person conversation. Keep those things precious and keep the idea of the pen and the paper still handy and journaling for anything that we want to keep to ourselves. Because there will be an anti-digital, there is going to be a low-tech, high-tech kind of world in the future. That's what I call artisanal intelligence and artificial intelligence, which is the hand touch everything that is very much in the real world, very low-tech. There's a lot of movement in that that's also emerging now, in the music world and all these different worlds where it's like low-fi versus high-fi and that's just only going to be exasperated even with the idea of repair and recycle. All these different things are going continue emerging that are anti-data and that's how you're going to be able to have control in the future or balance, what's out there and what's not.
[39:16 Briar: In terms of the environment and sustainability and other big global problems like this, do you think that technology is going to help eliminate them or eliminate human suffering overall? Or is it going to be a situation where we potentially have even more of a divide, the haves and the haves not? You said earlier as well about how technology is a reflection of us. So naturally with humans you've got the good and you've got the bad and then all of that's being reflected back.
[39:50] Samar: I was just at the Future forum and also I went to COP and there is a lot of innovative amazing things that technology is going to achieve and help us kind of resolve as far as all the damage that we've done to this planet and around sustainability, around creating new material and around undoing a lot of the damage. My concern that hasn't been as focused on is a lot of the technology that we're currently using are on the backs of a lot of really bad circumstances like what's happening in the Congo. Every device that we use, every generator that's generating AI needs raw material that is being extracted in the most violent matter. And in order for us to have the technology to help us resolve the technology, we're going through a brutal kind of reality.
[40:54] Samar: And that is something difficult to reconcile or find a solution for. As an individual though in order to circumvent it and be a little bit more in peace with it, it's being more aware of knowing that this is what's necessary for the technology to be powered. Be more mindful when buying a smart device. You don't have to upgrade every year or be more circular in your approach. For me, a lot of my work, I always encourage, how can you be a better future ancestor? And that comes as an individual. If you want to be a better future ancestor, you can't only rely on the technology to help with sustainability. It always starts from the individual, thinking long-termism, thinking circularly, more quality over quantity. Go towards repair initiatives, think of when technology is needed and when it's not needed.
[41:58] Samar: Always kind of encourage cultural currency versus fast consumerism and things of you just want them. Always encourage yourself to support artisans and craftsmen. Always think about what is the end cycle of the product that I am buying and what was the start cycle of it. I think it does start from an individual perspective and technology what it's going to help is help us on an individual level. If you are using an AI, brainstorm better ways that you can maybe wash your dishes or do your typical chores in the most efficient way possible, as quantum computing is being developed to find bigger solution for bigger problem, bigger planetary issues that they will help super solve, but at the same time understanding how is that technology being powered, if there is a way that we can power it in a much more ethical way. Because right now it's just really kind of scary that part.
[43:07] Briar: You spoke a bit about before bias. And it's something that really concerns me, bias when it comes to technology getting developed. I was horrified yet again last week to see that every single person on the open AI board is a male. Here we are again. It's the same old story week after week. And this company is playing big when it comes to AI, that they're developing AI. They're shaping our future and out of however many billions of women on the planet, there is not one that could be sitting on the board. What can we be doing in order to have more diversity when it comes to the development of technology?
[43:48] Samar: As far as AI and the data as well, the data that's being fed and the people that are actually responsible for programming the data and their insight and who are the people, who are the type of people that are developing the technology? And it's funny because I work with different think tank and foresight societies too and we do a lot of research as well. We talk a lot about digital colonialism in the sense because a lot of the technology is being developed by the same players that have a lot of the power right now or have had the power, have the advancement, have the technology, have the most like capability to do such work and whatever they're doing and whoever they are, they're still reflecting the same kind of framework that we've been trying to fight.
[44:46] Samar: These systems that are already rigged, that are super male dominant, super white male dominant, etcetera. What I kind of try to encourage a lot especially within the framework of education because I teach also how people can superpower their creativity and change their workflow through the use of AI. Because the bias is there so basically the data set, although they try and say there are people from all walks of life that they hire, whether it's people around ethics, people around policymaking, philosophers, all types of people, I don't think there is an adequate representation within those companies to develop the AI. There are no indigenous voices, there is no elderly, there is not necessarily young people, kids, all these people, all their voices are not present within the data set or within the framework of how the data is being developed.
[45:48] Samar: Although there are some that are on a smaller scale being developed around those particular framework. However, I think our responsibility is to feed it from our end as individual users, the data that we would like to see. For example, a very simple example, especially when I first started using AI, if you prompt “princess” with AI immediately it's going to give you the very kind of predominant Eurocentric woman, young, very stereotypical princess.
[46:25] Briar: Like a Disney princess.
[46:26] Samar: A very Disney princess, but not the current Disney because Disney is now just trying to diversify. It's more the old school idea of a Disney princess. Without you even mentioning anything the biases are there. If I say for instance, I want to prompt an Arab person, it's immediately going to also go towards a lot of the stereotypes of what Arab means. What I think is key to circumvent it is not only to not use the word that they are programming to match the stereotype. I always encourage people to prompt, is to describe something as though you're a child. You don't know what it's called. You don't know that this thing that I'm seeing in front of you is a woman or is a human. You don't know that as a kid, you haven't learned that language. How would you describe it? And this is how you'll get better results that are not biased because a bias is very much related to language. And because you have a set of people that are programming images based on a set of language, how you could be as a citizen is first of all insert data that's not there that you want to see in the data set, which you could do through your prompting, through many different things that you do as a training module and will slowly help train it.
[47:52] Samar: Also be very mindful with the wording that you use and don't fall into the bias trap, because we are so accustomed to using those words, we don't even think about them twice. But each word is so loaded. What if we have an entirely new language, which I think AI is going to have us or force us to have, which is this language of talking to the machine in ways that feels much more exciting and interesting than the typical language or like the lazy language that we typically use and it is immediate and faster and it's associated with all these things that are also very loaded.
[48:34] Briar: I think that's an interesting thing to think about. When you were talking about that I was even thinking of coding and how coding is a language to do whatever. When we used to communicate to each other when we were younger, we used to type you with a you, because we were just like, oh my god, we've got no predictive, we've got to type each letter out manually so we had shortcuts and ways of doing things.
[48:58] Samar: Or emojis or whatever.
[49:01] Briar: Yeah. And so you're right, we probably will start to see its own language of communication and how we're prompting the machine being developed. And if we're not potentially contributing towards it now, perhaps the language will start to develop and the people who were part of it will be clued up in it. And then the people who haven't been as evolved when it comes to join it later, it might be this complicated very different thing that you then have to really learn.
[49:29] Samar: Totally I mean it's exactly how an artist observes before their painting. When an artist observe before their painting because you're producing an image at the end of the day or you're producing a text. So you have always put your shoes in the framework of who you're trying or what kind of image are you producing, if you're producing something that's ultimately an image or ultimately a text. An artist usually, they're not saying, a woman that I'm painting for instance, they're actually starting with the skin texture and they're looking at the detail and they're doing the hair. They're actually observing that form and they're drawing it at the same time. It's the same idea with prompting. It's not the same language that we typically use. And even when you want to produce text or poetry or even music, it's going to be a very kind of similar framework to those particular observation and skillset. So when we talk about what is the key to prompt effectively in general, subject matter knowledge is still super important and being able to be cultural and being able to be observant and being able to really think about a different way to arm yourself with a different perspective in order to communicate.
[50:53] Briar: Awesome. Well I think it's been so insightful to hear your thoughts about artificial intelligence and art and the future and I'm sure lots of people heard lots of value from you. So thank you so much for joining the show today.
[51:05] Samar: Of course. Thanks so much for having me. Great question. I really appreciate all that you brought to the table today.
[51:11] Briar: Awesome. Thank you so much.
[51:13] Samar: Thank you.
