Talk at The Collective on Irresponsible AI

The Collective is bringing together creative & digital innovators, thought leaders & industry professionals from across the East Midlands to share, learn, connect, hatch plans & collaborate through a series of regular events & talks.

Professor Lars Erik Holmquist will give a talk at the next event:

Wednesday 9 October 2024, 1700-1930 at Belgrave Postgraduate Centre, Nottingham Trent University. 

Irresponsible AI: Why artists and creatives must take control of the means of generation

Generative artificial intelligence has quickly become an important tool in the creative industries. It is now possible to create high-quality text, images, music and even videos from just a simple text prompt. However, the most accessible AI models are currently firmly in the hands of a few very large companies in the tech industry, who are wary of any controverses that can affect their stock price. While safety and ethics are important, art thrives on uniqueness and breaking boundaries, and there is a danger that when the generative models are controlled and owned by a small number of actors, this will stifle creativity. In the worst case, it can lead to bland and generic outputs, and even become a form of pre-censorship. I will discuss how users of AI, in particular artists and creatives, need to take matters of technology in their own hands – in other words, take control of this means of generation.

BOOK HERE!

AI commentary on ITV news

Professor Lars Erik Holmquist appeared in an ITV television special on artificial intelligence and on ITV News on October 3. He talked about artificial intelligence and creativity, and how generative AI is already used in many creative fields such as music and filmmaking. But his prediction is that in the workplace, AI is only taking over "low-level" tasks like writing office memos and producing diagrams. For work that requires real human quality, AI is just another new tool that will help creatives to maximise their potential.

Watch the special on ITV below. The segment on creativity and AI starts at 11:30. There are also some nice views of NTU's new Design & Digital Arts building!

Commentary on Apple's AI announcements

Today, Professor Lars Erik Holmquist comments on the new announcements from Apple in The Conversation. 

It is anyone’s guess if Apple’s approach to AI will be able to claw back some of the lost stock price, not to mention the hundreds of billions invested by them and the rest of the tech industry. After all, AI still has amazing potential, but it may be time to slow down a bit, and take a moment to consider where it will actually be the most useful.

There is little in "Apple Intelligence" at the moment that will convince anyone to get a new phone, but some features point towards realising the research vision of ubiquitous and context-aware computing, such as the Hummingbird inter-personal awareness device (right) developed by us back in 1999!

Read the full article in The Conversation here:

AI probably isn’t the big smartphone selling point that Apple and other tech giants think it is.

Welcome new PhD student Anh Pham!

Anh Pham is a PhD student at the Nottingham School of Art & Design. She is joining us from Edinburgh Napier University, with a strong academic background in Graphic and Digital Design (BA) and User Experience Design (MSc). Driven by a deep passion for research and a curiosity for the future of technology, her current work is titled Conquering Social Anxiety: Embracing Comfort through Realistic Metaverse Interactions.

This PhD thesis aims to analyse the effect of the Metaverse on the experience of people having social anxiety disorder (SAD). It demonstrates how Metaverse may assist patients with social anxiety since they will have environment and avatars to interact, thereby bolstering their self-confidence in these settings and in the real life. The study will employ a robust mixed-methods approach to explore an experimental investigation that tracks the progression of participants’ social anxiety over time. By addressing the gaps in current understanding of the therapeutic applications of virtual reality, this study aims to contribute valuable insights into parameters and principles of human body movements, facial expressions in the Metaverse context, and social presence factors associated with interactive environments. 

New project on prototyping physical devices with AI

CXL has received funding from the EPSRC pro2 network+ for the project Conversational Prototyping:  Leveraging generative AI to support iterative device production and testing, led by Professor Lars Erik Holmquist. The one-year, £100K project will develop a new way to prototype interactive devices using Large Language Models. We will develop a system where users enter into a dialogue with the prototype to define and refine its functionality. 

The project collaborators are Datalink Electronics in Loughborough, which specialises in high-technology product design, development and manufacturing; Electric Circus, an art robot company in Amsterdam that is pioneering in the field of street-theater; and Poppe & Partners in Amsterdam, who specialise in the combination of culture and technology. 

Electronic Textiles demo at CHI 2024

The Advanced Textiles Research Group at the Nottingham School of Art and Design will give a lab demo at Interactivity at CHI 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.

The demo entitled Wearable Electronic Textiles for Healthcare, Wellbeing, and Protective Applications will let attendees interact with textiles capable of fall and near-fall detection, temperature sensing, acoustic sensing, giving haptic feedback, and harvesting solar energy. 

Professor Lars Erik Holmquist of CXL co-authored the demo and also co-chaired the Interactivity program at CHI 2024. We hope to see you there!

Professor Lars Erik Holmquist talks about design and AI

Ahead of the opening of our new Design & Digital Arts (D&DA) building, Professor Lars Erik Holmquist, an expert in design and innovation at the Nottingham School of Art & Design, explains how artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionise creativity in new and unimagined ways.

The D&DA facility is a significant investment in NTU’s digital provision, providing enhanced digital sophistication to our new suite of courses. For more details visit https://www.ntu.ac.uk/dda