AI generated art, promt: A free, diverse world with space for everyone, happiness, diversity
AI art generator used: night café
inspired by WHAT THE AID
Hello Dear Readers,
And here we are already at the beginning of my last individual post for this blog journey of ours.
I would like to have a discussion about my findings of today in the comment section below. Feel free to leave your impressions, opinions, experiences. As always, I appreciate every contribution.
A brief excursion into a related topic before I continue:
We decided to place our logo and an orange filter over our cover images for unity. In this case, both were purposely left off to not compromise the character and atmosphere of this AI generated cover image.
I used the promt (see above) to generate a symbolic piece for what I believe to be the goal of humanitarian efforts; a shared, equitable, free society. I tried many different promts and styles with the same general direction and then chanced upon the image above.
The idea itself, to use AI generated art as cover images for the blog posts, came from fellow students who are also participating in this year’s blog projects at Malmö university and who have made a blog of their own. One of the reasons for using AI generated art, besides the beauty and creativity, is to address copy right issues for images used on a blog (read about the reasoning, by the way, we decided to address this by using royalty free sources on our blog and by appropriately crediting images where copy right applies).
I have read a few articles about copy right and AI generated art in general. In theory, a company or an individual don’t have to pay at times hundreds and thousands of Euro/US Dollar/any currency in fees (also royalty) to commission artists and then wait, at times, months for them to complete their work, when they can now use the art for basically free. It can be as simple as entering the name of an artist of one’s choice accompanied by a refined text-promt into an AI generator and then generate several pieces of usable art in the artist’s style in literal seconds.
I personally think, that as a first aid measure in light of the potential for damage AI-art has (read more), the easy access and how wide spread it already is, the logical consequence should be to at least for now globally ban any and all commercial use of art by AIs, which use copy righted images in their databases, that the user neither owns nor has a license for.
Further measures are needed to protect artist rights and livelihoods.
This is a rather new, very complicated and relevant issue, which surely will gain more importance with time.
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We are at the end of one interesting topic, which would definitely warrant its own post (or even blog).
And on to today’s main topic:
My aim here is to critically reflect on practical advantages and pitfalls of relying on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development and Communication for development in the context of humanitarian and developmental aid. In the bottom half of the first individual blog post that I made on this blog, I raised questions. I consider these questions to be integral and will address the first in more depth in this blog post while elaborating some of the points that I touched on, when introducing my topic for this blog (read more).
The questions can be boiled down to the following:
What are significant obstacles that practitioners and recipients of humanitarian and development aid face when seeking to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to further Development itself or communicate Development?
What is going right?
What can we do better?
For my second post on this blog I wrote a report about a webinar by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative on how community and stakeholder engagement can be improved in humanitarian settings. With this report I aimed to address several questions especially how messaging and participation can be improved and what some of the hurdles are which impede efforts of practitioners to facilitate that effectively. The answer can be found in reforming the way that projects are conducted by making significant changes at the planning stage and also by thoroughly evaluating the circumstances of locations and communities that they seek to engage (read more).
Here and now, I will discuss current events involving the social media platform Twitter, which is undergoing reconstruction after the takeover by Elon Musk. Furthermore, I will expound on technocolonialism, that is digital colonialism (for the purpose of this post both terms mean the same), and the prevalent motivation behind the creation of the most used ICTs (e.g. Social media platform) to further highlight some of the problems, that we face when relying on them ‘blindly’.
[…] digital colonialism is about entrenching an unequal division of labor, where the dominant powers have used their ownership of digital infrastructure, knowledge and their control of the means of computation to keep the South in a situation of permanent dependency.
– Michael Kwet (2021, March 3)
Kwet (2021) points out that the old colonialist relationships between the global north and south have transitioned to the digital space. He links capitalist notions of monopolising the digital markets of the global south and global ecological crises (e.g. environmental destruction, climate change) in a pattern of exploitation that needs to be overcome.
People of the global south especially are still exploited for labour. Be it menial to provide raw precious materials for the creation of digital devices or as “data annotation for artificial intelligence datasets, call-center workers and content moderators for social media giants” (Kwet 2021). Nhemachena, Hlabangane and Kaundjua (2020) add that with the emergence of the internet of things indigenous people of the global south may be even further relegated to a mere resource for data mining, seen as little more than non-humans living beings.
According to Birhane (2019) it can be argued that for a more equitable outcome, people of the global south need to become actors and participants in digital development. The ownership of their own data needs to be acknowledged and respected (Birhane 2019; Nhemachena et al 2020; Kwet 2021).
An overly positive image of ICTs still seems ubiquitous and is diverting attention from negative aspects. There is often a clear profit oriented intention behind their creation and heterogeneous accessibility of ICTs and internet itself, leaving underserved communities and individuals in the global south in the margins (Bentley, Nemer, Vannini 2019).
When we enter into a consumer-provider relationship with big tech companies, then the currency we pay with to use ICTs is mainly our data and time (Tracy 2019; Birhane 2019). Tracy (2019) notes that we, as a society, have outsourced many tasks and knowledge, which we used to perform and store ourselves, to “memory partners” (e.g. ICts and peers). This enables us to concentrate on what is more relevant to us at a given moment, but at the cost of much of our independence (Tracy 2019).
In the global south, in a context of aid work, losing the ability to control what is done with data, that e.g. can be used for location tracking of refugees and aid practitioners, can have lethal consequences. The issue of profit orientation, that is a lack of focus on the benefit of the users of ICTs, appears to still be underrated. Communication approaches and humanitarian efforts need to account for this, wherever possible, despite the crucial benefits of ICTs.
Scholars note that social media […] has great potential for social and cultural transformation
– Michelle Millard and William J. Payne (2019: 196)
Chaos in the Twitterverse
Twitter is among the fifteen most popular social media platforms in the world and has 436 million users world wide (number from January this year, Dixon 2022). Over the past seven days, a series of dramatic changes has unfolded, since Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and famously the wealthiest person in the world, has finalised the takeover.
Private users, public figures, political figures and governmental, private and public institutions alike also use it to communicate about matters of public interest (Millard, Payne 2019): e.g. live news, announcements, campaign related information by politicians, practical and infrastructure related news by local and national (and international) institutions etc. This makes some of the changes, that Musk has chosen to make, even more impactful.
Initially Twitter was not supposed to become one focus of my argumentation in this post. However, the more than drastic current and still ongoing changes to the social media platform are an illustrative example for one worst case scenario, when the agenda of a provider is in conflict with user interest regarding ICT.
I have included one of many news clips below, which is discussing the situation in more detail.
Musk let go approximately 3,700 people of a total workforce of only 7,500 (Harwell, Zakrzewski, Stanley-Becker 2022; MSNBC 2022). This in itself is already quite controversial and while this isn’t my topic, the way he is treating Twitter’s workforce is striking. He is ceaselessly tweeting publicly about many of the changes he plans for the platform instead of communicating this internally. Most of the employees in high level management positions have been laid off. Many of his employees learned of the loss of their jobs per E-Mail or by simply being unable to log into company systems the next working day.
I mention this to highlight how chaotic, unprofessional and disorganised Musk’s new leadership of Twitter appears at the moment (not to mention seemingly callous and disregarding any consequences for the personal lives of his employees).
Directly relevant for our discussion is which departments were lost due to the lay offs:
The curation team – responsible for processing and dealing with potential and verified misinformation
The security team – e.g. tasked with the protection of data privacy (laid off workers amount to around half of the team)
The human rights team – protecting the rights and lives of people living and operating in conflict zones in the global south
The ethical artificial intelligence team – researching ways to prevent algorithm driven bias and discrimination on Twitter itself
Musk only reinstated content moderation after civil rights orgainsations protested. He has also planned to restructure the current verification system (the blue check marks). So far only public figures as well as institutions that have proven their identity could be verified. This enhanced trust into the legitimacy of the check mark. Now it will be reshaped into a for profit system, where any user can pay 8$ monthly to gain the check mark, while verification of the user’s identity is no longer required (Harwell et al 2022; MSNBC 2022).
This makes civil rights organisations and experts alike expect a rise in misinformation and a loss of operational integrity of the essential regulatory functions of Twitter and with it the reliability of information on the platform on one hand and on the other the safety of its users. This may influence the midterm elections of seats for the House and Senate on Tuesday the 8th of November. The midterm elections will determine which of the two major political parties, Republicans or Democrats will gain a majority until 2024. With that the leading party will have the ability to significantly reshape politics and the legislative landscape in America, one of the wealthiest and most influential countries of the world (Harwell et al 2022; MSNBC 2022).
It is unclear, if Musk implemented these changes on Twitter, knowing and provoking the potential consequences or whether prioritising profit maximisation, for the notoriously unprofitable platform, served as main factor to inform the decision.
Lessons which can be learned here (Conclusion)
American (foreign) policy may change and with it the budget and regulations of humanitarian and development aid in a more conservative direction under Republicans or a more democratic direction led by the Democrats. The changes to Twitter will directly affect practitioners and recipients of aid going forward, if they continue to use Twitter with the now added vulnerabilities.
I argue that the whole ongoing debacle with Twitter, reinforces in a tragic yet arresting fashion that commodities that are relevant for the infrastructure and provide services for crucial aspects of societies, do not belong in the hand of profit oriented corporations (other examples are water, public transportation, health care services etc.).
In my opinion, ICTs are ambiguous in their current form and may have as many advantages as they have drawbacks, when used for humanitarian and developmental purposes.
“Who will pay for this?” is often asked when it comes to non-lucrative spending, e.g. for mainly social purposes. Securing (equitable) easily accessible online spaces, that are save, for the public in collaboration with citizens and communities, may be one way forward (Walsham 2017; Bentley et all 2019; Millard, Payne 2019).
This will hopefully one day come to be recognised as a necessary investment into the future and may prove to be less costly on all levels than the alternative.
Thank you very much for reading what I’ve written in the framework of my individual theme for this blog. I hope that you could gain something useful.
The take away from my personal blog journey
I took the first baby steps to running a blog (or news letters etc). I gained experience that I will surely be able to make use of in the future, privately or with a group in a semi or fully professional capacity.
I appreciate the personal nature of blogging, even though blogs as a format have been largely replaced by other formats, such as newsletters and don’t do as well as they used to (which I didn’t know before it was pointed out to us by a Professor). The blog provided an opportunity to adopt a more journalistic style of writing. I chose some subjects more proactively, relying on current events and topics of interest.
I’m always thankful to be able to learn more about underlying systemic structures and illustrative examples of how our society works and how it became what it is today. During the module, which incorporated this blog project, I have been able to learn much of value from the professors, the guest lecturers, peers and by pursuing my own work. I have had the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between ICTs and Development in particular and the directions in which our global society and local communities have changed and will change.
Regarding the technical and logistic aspects of maintaining this blog: I haven’t had previous experience with blogging in any way and didn’t know WordPress. I was able to practice setting up a blog theme, while learning by doing how to navigate the different options for a result that could meet the standards we set ourselves.
Feel free to leave me a comment or even comments. It was a pleasure 😀.
References
Bentley, C.M.; Nemer, D.; Vannini, S. (2019). “When words become unclear”: unmasking ICT through visual methodologies in participatory ICT4D. AI & Society, 34, 477–493.
Dixon, S. (2022). Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users. Statista. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
Birhane, A. (2019, July 9). The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa. Real Life Mag. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://reallifemag.com/the-algorithmic-colonization-of-africa/
Harwell, D.; Zakrzewski, C.; Stanley-Becker, I. (2022, November 4th). Twitter layoffs gutted election information teams days before midterms. The Washington Post. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/05/twitter-layoffs-election-impact/
Kwet, M. (2021, March 3). Digital colonialism: the evolution of American empire. ROAR. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://roarmag.org/essays/digital-colonialism-the-evolution-of-american-empire/
Millard, M.; Payne, W. J. (2019). Disseminating Knowledge in the Digital Age: The Case of the Refugee Research Network. In: McGarath, S. and J. E. E. Young (Eds.). Mobilizing global knowledge: refugee research in an age of displacement (pp.193-2011). Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.
MSNBC (2022, November 10). Elon Musk Appears In Over His Head With Purchase Of Twitter. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2GfLxTzt7I
Nhemachena, A.; Hlabangane, N.; Kaundjua, M. (2020). Relationality or Hospitality in Indigenous Knowledge Systems? Big Data, Internet of Things and Technocolonialism in Africa, In: Decolonising Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in an Age of Technocolonialism: Recentring African Indigenous Knowledge and Belief Systems (pp.63-98). Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG. Note: I consider this a controversial source. Select notions of the authors in this chapter, in my opinion, revolve around rather wild conspiracy theories without marking them as such. It was an interesting chapter, however, and adds another viewpoint to this discussion.
Tracy, G. (2019, April 8). How Much Can We Afford to Forget, if We Train Machines to Remember? Media Studies.press. Retrieved November 6th, 2022 from: https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/tracy-afford/release/2
Walsham, G. (2017) ICT4D research: reflections on history and future agenda. Information Technology for Development, 23:1, 18-41.
