Workshops

Fictional Abstracts: Ethics, Sustainability, and Creative-AI Futures

Time: Monday, full-day, June 19

Schedule

9:00 a.m. – 9:20 a.m. 
Intro
9:20 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. 
Round-table presentations
10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. 
Break-out sessions – working on Fictional Abstracts in groups
10:30 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. 
Coffee Break 
11:00 p.m. – 12:00 p.m. 
(continuing) Break-out sessions – working on Fictional Abstracts in groups
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. 
Lunch  
1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. 
Preparing presentations from the break-out groups 
2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.  
Presenting the work and discussions from break-out groups 
3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. 
Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:30 p.m.  
Concluding discussion

Workshop Description

Keywords: Knowledge, design fiction, fictional abstracts, ethics, sustainability
Type of Workshop: Hands-on writing + discussion workshop

Description: There has been an increasing interest in discussing implications of technologies for computational creativity in terms of ethics and sustainability. This workshop brings such questions into focus in the specific context of Creative-AI systems by exploring questions of ethics and sustainability through the use of Fictional Abstracts. We use Fictional Abstracts to cast forward 15 years to 2038 to imagine the future of Creative-AI, and reflect on how we got there. By writing Fictional Abstracts – abstracts of research papers yet to be written – we will unpick critical tensions in the advancement of computational creativity over the next decades. The workshop invites participants to develop perspectives and sensitivities on the futures of AI-enabled computational creativity and to critically reflect on the assumptions, methods, and tools for enabling (and disabling) such futures, with a particular focus on questions of ethics and sustainability.

Selected Workshop Participants and Abstracts

Participating

Prospective workshop participants will each submit a Fictional Abstract. These will be distributed to all participants before the workshop. During the workshop, participants’ submitted abstracts will be compared and discussed in terms of the consequences of the (fictive, future) research presented in the abstracts. Furthermore, the workshop participants will also explore the usefulness of using Fictional Abstracts to explore issues around critical futures, and discuss in which settings this methodology could be beneficial. We want to reach a broad range of researchers interested in the future of Creative-AI including but not limited to (CC) authors working with AI. Selection will be based on the submitted abstracts and a balanced representation of established and junior researchers. The submitted Fictional Abstracts will be evaluated in terms of the potential to trigger dialogue on the future of Creative-AI, particularly from ethical and sustainability perspectives.

Note: The selected abstracts will be published on the workshop website. By signing up and applying to the workshop, participants agree that the data produced during the workshop may be used to inform a future publication on the Speculative Abstracts Method.

Submissions

Speculative Abstracts submissions should meet the following requirements:

  • Abstracts should aim for triggering critical discussion and reflection.
  • Abstracts should contain Title, Authors, Keywords, Abstract text, optional References and adhere to approximate length of a regular abstract (200-300 words).
  • Submitted via email to organizers.
  • PDF file formatted according to the this template.
  • Instructions/guidelines for formulating and writing speculative abstracts can be found here.
  • Participants are required to attend the workshop in person.

Preliminary Important Dates

  • Submissions due: May 5, 2023 (late submissions may be considered until June 5th)
  • Acceptance notification: May 15, 2023
  • Workshop: June 19, 2023

Organizers

To contact the organizers please send an email to ppja@kth.se.

Related work

This workshop is based on prior Fictional Abstracts workshops in other academic venues:

These publications have resulted from prior Fictional Abstracts workshops:

  • The futures of computing and wisdom. NordiCHI ‘18. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3240167.3240265
  • Pargman, D. S., Eriksson, E., Bates, O., Kirman, B., Comber, R., Hedman, A., & van den Broeck, M. (2019). The future of computing and wisdom: insights from human–computer interaction. Futures, 113, 102434.