A River of Stuff or How Samuel R. Delany Predicted Generative AI
I first met writer and critic Samuel R. Delany 10 years ago at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, for the Octavia E. Butler Celebration of Art & Activism. Our meeting was brief because we were in an auditorium full of people to participate in an “emergent strategy” workshop with Adrienne Maree Brown. Emergent strategy (a plan towards a goal) is based in the “science of emergence — the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.”
last march, tananarive (due) invited friends and colleagues of octavia’s together to reflect, share work, converse and celebrate octavia’s life and impact. writers and thinkers like samuel r. delany, nalo hopkinson, nisi shawl, steven barnes, lynnee denise, jewelle gomez and sheree thomas sat together and honored their friend and ancestor. — Adrienne Maree Brown
During the emergent strategy workshop Adrienne asked us to close our eyes and feel/be present in the space. Then, she instructed us to pair up, look deeply at each other, and tell our partner about one thing we want to change. My thing was education (and digital media of course). At the time I had gotten into augmented reality (AR) and less than two years later I discovered generative artificial intelligence or GenAI. I was looking to connect recent developments in GenAI, education, art, and culture. When I re-read Mark Dery’s “Black to the Future” chapter with Greg Tate, Tricia Rose, and Samuel R. Delany and something clicked for me.
Delany’s prescient description of “modern boxes of street technology” highlighted the coming information age, a time in which information or data would become a commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially using computer technology. At the time Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (and the interview) was published there was a proliferation of “black” street devices such as beepers and portable audio players. Now we have camera-enabled smartphones and tablet pcs with apps that collect our information 24–7. Some people use their game controllers like remotes, mouses and trackpads. These devices have changed our relationship to technology and, along with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web, helped to produce large amounts of data that has been used to train GenAI models.
Yes, just living life with our personal devices and apps trains AI.
Delany noted that black urban youth, while helping to adopt and use street technologies, are “entirely on the receiving end of a river of stuff”, which would not lead to equitable feedback and creation (Dery 1994:193). River of stuff can also reference the large datasets used in GenAI and just like some 20 years before now most of us are still on the receiving end of that.
In the swiftly evolving digital landscape, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is heralding unprecedented changes in how we interact, work, and innovate. However, this technological renaissance brings to the fore a critical yet often overlooked aspect: widening the existing digital divide. — Mennatullah Hendawy
So what can we do about it?
We can revisit Adrienne Maree Brown’s “science of emergence” to look at complex and dynamic cultural arenas that are adapting to breakthroughs in generative AI… and then we can invite people to play (learn) in that space (what experts refer to as latent space). A couple of weeks ago I taught a course titled “Creative AI & Design” to local youth. Most were young ladies and all of them are from groups whose voices are largely absent in the AI and GenAI discourses and activities.
The “Creative AI & Design” was designed to be a series of simple or small interactions, to immerse students in the GenAI space. For example, our prompt battles were more like games that gave participants a chance to hone their prompt engineering skills. Students used their smartphones as well as laptops and lab computers. We looked at films like Coded Bias and shows like Black Mirror (“Joan is Awful”), then had large and small group discussions about them. Students were given practice time using a variety of GenAI (image, audio, gesture) tools. They learned how to code for AI. You can read more about the course HERE.
Each student also received a copy of Unmasking AI.
I agreed to do an AI art workshop at the upcoming Black Joy AI Summit in Washington D.C. I almost attended an August design charrette for a “playtest: Prompt Battle campaign” but I caught Covid-19 (for the first time). Some of the people who were at the playtest charrette will be at the Black Joy AI Summit. Of course there are other AI-focused meetings and interactions involving underrepresented groups (ex. Innovators for Purpose in Cambridge, MA). My work is primarily focused on education and digital media (art, culture, technology). Additionally, I would like to look more closely at the complex systems and patterns arise out of these events… an emergent strategy, indeed!