Repairing AI

Artificial Intelligence Work Futures

Royal College of Art for Microsoft Research

Role: Researcher, Designer

Collaborator: Phillip Quiza

Proposal: We proposed the idea of “open source AI“ - a social platform that would allow AI coding on devices and software to be edited and tailored, akin to video game mods - to be compatible with Microsoft’s Edge technologies.

Skills: design research, prototyping, installation design

Microsoft Research, based in Cambridge, UK, asked RCA students to speculate on the future of work for humans and artificial intelligence. How can AI be beneficial for humans in the workforce and what consequences will arise in an automated future? Choose a profession to develop your idea.

Our initial idea was to better understand how AI has impacted the repair industry and we began our research by meeting with two repairmen, one for cameras and the other for smartphones. After interviews, recordings, cultural probes and field observations, our focus took an interesting turn.

We uncovered a world of controversy around consumer vs. corporate ownership, corporate relations with independent repair shops, and privacy legislation.

In short, the rise of digital products has inevitably led to the loss of consumer ownership. Where consumers once bought physical copies of products (e.g. books, CD’s), consumers now buy limited rights to a product rather than assume ownership of it (e.g. music streaming services sell you the right to listen to a file on their service only). Loss of ownership combined with AI technologies storing user data in the Cloud have prompted fears over privacy invasion, hacking and corporate power.

We investigated digital systems and online networks addressing these issues and found that Microsoft had already begun developing at the edge technologies - rather than sit in the Cloud, data is stored locally in the device itself.

We proposed a platform that facilitates open source sharing of AI code that could complement at the edge tech. The platform would allow users to connect with professionals and experts to edit and tailor their devices and software code.

Our exhibition installation was a series of arcade games to immerse participants in an alternate world where corporations, consumers and independent professionals/repair persons are competing for the right to repair and how an open source model would impact them.