Vision & History

MISSION STATEMENT

Feminist AI™ works to put technology into the hands of makers, researchers, thinkers and learners to amplify unheard voices and create more accessible AI for all. We create spaces where intergenerational BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ womxn and non-binary folks can gather to build tech together that is informed by our cultures, identities and experiences. We engage with Intersectional feminism to spotlight our stories, inventions, designs and leadership, and to co-create more equitable futures.

OUR VISION

We believe that individuals should be able to understand and have a role in how technology affects their daily lives and communities. Our projects and related programs are for individuals at any level of exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) thinking. We approach each project by questioning assumptions embedded in AI and machine learning (ML) modeling and design approaches, while co-creating our own technologies, in order to make AI thinking accessible to all.

VALUES & PHILOSOPHY

• We design with and for unheard voices in AI creation. We must be invited to a location to participate and have consent from the communities with which we work. 

• We honor all knowledge systems and skills equally. 

• We acknowledge and own our privilege. 

• We design multiple entry points for involvement so we can pull from different knowledge systems for our design and development. 

• The AI project/research can be either a social response or technical making. We evaluate our methods as we work, revisiting every step of our process with every new project. 

• We believe individuals affected by technologies should be designing and making the technologies they use. 

• The physical (hardware, interaction, experience) and the digital are both key elements in our AI Design. Culture, material, and purpose are just as important as the data and model. 

• We attribute everything, including the people who have come before us and original parallel research. 

• We encourage our community to move beyond framing AI around human intelligence, or human-centered and gendered approaches to AI, and to think about alternative approaches to AI design (posthuman). 

• We probe the knowledge assumptions in AI systems and deliberately deconstruct existing approaches to AI creation, from the data to the rulesets to the output. 

• We contribute to and community source our own data and rules to control our own intelligent futures. 

• We use AI as a tool to both highlight and co-create arts and cultures. 

• We recognize AI as a design material. 

BACKGROUND

Feminist AI™ was founded in 2016 as a community-based research and design group focused on critical making in response to hegemonic AI. We proposed an alternative to the lack of diversity in AI design and development by co-designing intelligent products, experiences, and futures from a feminist posthumanist perspective. We used AI Art and Design projects to create AI products, experiences, and systems. Some of the works we referenced are by Dr. Alison Adam. Dr. Sara Ahmed, Dr. N. Katherine Hayles, Dr. Dara Blumenthal, Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink, and the writing voice of bell hooks. Our broader goal is to design for embodiment in AI systems.

Feminist AI™ has functioned as a volunteer-run organization for over four years. During that time, we expanded knowledge about emerging technology by holding workshops, hosting artists and educational events, and engaging in longer-term research and art projects. Many of these events were hosted in our collaborative downtown Los Angeles space, while other events were hosted on-site in other locations or virtually.

METHODOLOGIES & TOOLS

We use several overlapping methodological steps in our work - paired with the socio-technological design tool POIETO™ to create and identify the contributors of our critical AI projects. 

Using poieto, in our making process we explore:

Systems: We identify multiple systems that the intelligence is operating within. Most of our research projects are a critical response to a problematic system (see "Contextual Normalcy"). 

Our Data: We start by questioning thinking around information, data, and knowledge. This approach can involve translating information to data, data cleaning, and exploring how data and the material form of an object can be used to design intelligent projects. 

Our Rules: We design our own rule sets (algorithm). These rules are not only technical but incorporate thinking around culture and transparency, and are community approved or defined. 

Our Frame (shifts): Each community designing with poieto develop their own approaches to framing, accountability and privacy.

Our Outcomes: With our approaches to data and algorithms, we are able to design for not only specific outputs but also a larger outcome. We can move beyond thinking about intelligence into addressing the larger systems of knowledge that produce this thinking. 

Our Futures: Our design projects engage in world-building in physical and digital environments. Elements of our projects are prototyped digitally in Unity and physically in our cities. We use AI projects to engage in AI education, to reveal insights about human bias, and to co-design our futures.

PROGRAMMING APPROACH

Our current programming structure is centered on critical writing, making, or concepts that are co-created by the Feminist AI™ community and other organizations we work with, including Mozilla, USNC for UN Women (LA), and Women's Center for Creative Work - to name a few. We begin each collaboration by listening to what our community and community collaborators would like to get out of our critical research, rather than dictating what technology should be taught.

We use the socio-tech design tool poieto to engage in community education. This results in critical prototypes which are then translated to produce critical projects; these can be art, design, activism, or product focused. We share this work in a final show once the program has ended.

Feminist AI™ retains the rights to our projects, however we also support community members research projects. Through the design tool poieto, members may share, sell, or open up for collaboration their own projects, informed on inspired by the Feminist AI™ projects.

Our programming is designed as follows:

information → participatory education → critical art and/or product projects → FINAL AI art and design show

Information may be books, diagnostics, concepts of health, music, etc.

Participatory education is achieved through learning modules with community members and knowledge experts. This may take the form of online education modules, in person, and/or community workshops and panels - and is centered around use of the social technological design tool POIETO™. Additional education often occurs between community members via our programming, slack, phone calls, and community events.

The critical AI art, activism and design projects are inspired / based off of the information we are working with for that specific project, or year long research project. The participatory education modules should inform the projects.

The final AI Art, Design and Activism Show includes the work of Feminist.AI members, partners, and allies - and additionally includes a larger call for participation from people around the world.

SELECTED PROJECTS & PROGRAMMING

The goals of our AI projects are to engage in AI education, reveal insights about human bias, and co-create our futures. Find out more about our Community Programs here. Discover more about our work, including our ongoing AI projects, here.

ENCODE (2020-2021)

Encode is the umbrella term for Feminist AI's 2020-2021 projects. This range of programming is inspired by UCLA Professor Safiya U. Noble's 2018 book Algorithms of Oppression. This includes community-driven education, such as  co-hosting a virtual monthly book club with the Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW) in alliance with The Free Black Women’s Library - LA (TFBWL-LA). During this program, we focused on critically reading Algorithms of Oppression. This core media acts as a starting point for the education and critical making programs in the Encode critical education programs with poieto, as well as the final art show at the end of the project organized by poieto, CalArts, CCA and select cultural organizations around the world. Our core educational research will create a space for people to explore algorithmic bias, while centering the learning on exploring alternative, community driven approaches to creating alternative approaches to search, and critical approaches to search engines. This art show will include the work from our critical making workshops, as well as a larger community call to for artworks focusing on algorithmic bias with contributions from the local LA arts community and creators from around the world.

Learning Here (2019)

In this small series of community research projects, using poieto and our Feminist AI™ community, we explored how training a machine learning system results in the creation of community-centered rules, data collection and ethics, while highlighting site specific histories. 

Contextual Normalcy (2018) - a poieto™ project with Feminist.AI members

Through a series of workshops and iterative development of mobile web applications, we developed alternative approaches to current mental health diagnostic processes and their underlying frameworks and definitions. We didn’t seek to disregard or set aside current mental health best practices, but instead to supplement these with practices that were more community-derived and informed by culturally-centered beliefs and definitions of mental health and well-being. From the sign up page where we center and simply the language of consent, we treated each participant as a first-class digital citizen, simply presenting the terms of data usage consent and allowing participants to rescind the rights to the usage of their data at any time. Using novel data collection approaches with strong visual design elements, haptic elements, and XR (extended reality), we developed innovative research approaches to combining AI and XR.  By using these emerging technologies, we allowed participants to give physicality to feelings in the digital space. This research utilized the socio-tech tool poieto to deconstruct problematic approaches to emotions analysis and consent, while creating a place for users to co-create and crowd source their own data, with their own priorities - resulting in their own models. Allowing for multiple approaches to embodied data research, and exploratory conversations around diagnosis and treatment.

Intelligent Protest (2016-2017)

Framed through the tool poieto, members hosted fourteen workshops with community participants focused on creating, labeling, and using personal data. Then, participants ideated how they would create their own AI Design. Using low-cost and approachable materials and software, members and participants created a system in which people who are unable to communicate in person with government representatives or at public meetings due to work, health restrictions, or caregiving responsibilities could be virtually present in a space to express their opinions and beliefs. This was used by residents of Alhambra, California to express disapproval for a plan from the city parks department to conduct a mass tree removal. This AI/XR co-design explored the material and community experiences of protest by using bodies and sound, in-real-life, virtual reality, and augmented reality; creating a space for the actions of one user to support or amplify the voice of another user.

Thoughtful Voice Design (2016-2017)

Using the social tech methods from poieto, and the voice design toolkit, participants across the United States collaborated on the creation of voice plugins for Amazon Alexa. We incorporated voice-pitch sliders into the project that allowed for people to play with the thought of gendered artificial agents.  Beyond voice design, further work was conducted using sounds from both machines and nature. This research exploring audio design and algorithmic transparency remains ongoing. Additionally, Mutable Studio hosted an event wherein female-identified persons were encouraged to record their own voices telling stories of times they were encouraged to change their voice, due to pejorative comments on their gender, race, or native language. Using a specially created speculative larynx, attendants of the concluding event were encouraged to amplify unheard or marginalized voices. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Feminist AI™ research group is part of the non-profit corporation, Mutable Studio. Mutable Studio is home to Feminist AI™, MLUX, and The Tomorrow People. Feminist AI™ uses poieto to design and teach about artificial intelligence and social technology projects.

The research and workshops for Feminist AI™ started in July, 2016. Feminist AI™ is informed by community, academia, art, and design—and sometimes industry! We are inspired by many communities, including WCCW, Machine Project, and the Altadena Public Library (to name a few). Find out more about our philosophy here.

Additional inspiration comes from the work of Alison Adam, Rebecca Fiebrink, Safiya U. Noble, Sarah T. Roberts, Ytasha Womack, Meredith Whittaker, Ruha Benjamin, Kate Crawford, Dara Blumenthal, N. Katherine Hayles, Sara Ahmed, Anne Burdick, Elise Co, Molly Wright Steenson, Genevieve Bell, and our Feminist.AI community. 

Concept and identity designed v.1 by Stephanie Cedeno & Nicci Yin. Banner image credit by Feminist.AI member Yvonne Cruz. Additional designers over the years include Michelle Gong and Matt Asato-Adams, Sophia deLara, Qiao Huang, Nina Shahriaree, and Olive Midori Kimoto (poster). Naming acknowledgments: Many thanks to Jana Thompson for naming the series Ways of Knowing (also crediting Dr. Safiya U. Noble, Alison Adam, Jill Mattuck Tarule, Nancy Goldberger, Blythe Clinchy, Mary Field Belenky). Additional naming credits go to Jana Thompson for Encoding Ourselves, and Sophia deLara for ENCODE. Special thanks to Hailey Mah for website updates, communication, and editing. Christine Meinders is the founder of Feminist AI™ and creator of the social tech design methodology and tool poieto.

SUPPORTERS

The Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2)
poieto
Mozilla
California College of the Arts
CalArts
The Women's Center for Creative Work
USNC for UN Women - LA Chapter
Machine Project

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