World Bank: AI, Technology, and Art

At the World Bank, Alexa Alice Joubin gave this lightning talk on the intersection of AI technology and art. Are technologies an extension of humanity or a surrogate of it? Why do sentient robots often want to become “real” humans in movies?
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00:12 World Bank introduces Joubin
00:39 Technology intertwined with art
01:13 Joubin's self introduction
01:36 Scan the QR code
01:40 Five themes
01:51 Art and technology transform each other
02:57 Sci fi inspiring new technologies
03:37 Technologists becoming artists
04:03 Digital transformations
04:22 Technologies of representation
05:00 Long history of "banal" technologies
05:40 Humans' relations with the non-human
06:31 Synthetic texts, images, videos: implications
06:45 AI is a humanistic question
08:00 Our nightmares and dreams
09:08 Re-centering art in society
09:22 AI as social collaboration tools
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Art is front and center in digital transformations of our society today, because art fosters creativity, and creative thinking leads to social change. Technology has always been intertwined with art, and artistic imagination has led to new tech designs. Art has also been used as proof of concept to launch emerging technologies. When ChatGPT was launched in late 2022, the general public was transfixed by its ability to write poetry rather than its potential of carrying out bureaucratic tasks.
So, how do we use technology and art to make the world a better place?
Art gives cultural meanings to technologies. In fact, every technology tells a story. It needs a description, and descriptions are essentially narratives.