Humanities expert to join UKRI-funded fellowship focused on Artificial Intelligence
Photo by Steve Johnson in Unsplash
A leading researcher in the field of creative technologies is to join a three-year project investigating how to creatively embody artificial intelligence.
Gabriella Giannachi, Professor in Performance and New Media in the Department of English and Creative Writing, will join the Somabotics Programme, led by the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, funded by UKRI.
It follows the award of a Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowship to Professor Steve Benford at Nottingham – a programme designed to support world-leading, innovative AI research in collaboration with partners from other sectors to accelerate its impact.
Professor Giannachi, Director of the Centre for Intermedia and Creative Technologies, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, has collaborated with Professor Benford for nearly 20 years. Working at the intersection of humanities and computer science, they have published numerous papers in high-impact journals and jointly authored and edited the book Performing Mixed Reality (2011).
“My contribution to this exciting Somabiotics programme will be to bring humanities thinking to bear on AI,” Professor Giannachi said. “Currently, there is a fundamental difference in how the two areas view knowledge, so my role will be to help to introduce important ideas such as positionality and subjectivity that are likely to challenge current thinking in AI and open it up to accommodating the rich diversity and complexity of human experience.”
Through the collaboration Professor Giannachi will conduct research into how to document creative approaches to developing robots and AI, and collaborate with Professor Benford and the team in developing a framework of concepts and ethical principles that could be used further afield.
The Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowships are a £15 million UKRI investment, awarded to three leading academics.
Professor Benford’s Somabiotics Programme will focus upon the creation of AI that embraces ambiguity and improvisation, and evokes interpretation. The touring artworks supported through the fellowship will seek to inspire the creative industries with new forms of cultural experience, while engaging the public to reflect on the future role of AI in society, especially on how it might become more inclusive.
