The interaction design studio celebrates its 20th anniversary with an interactive installation that makes tangible and experiential the working mechanism of a neural network.
Dotdotdot celebrates its 20 years and on the occasion of the Fuorisalone presents "Data Bugs - AI is a mirror" an immersive emotional installation that makes tangible and experiential the working mechanism of a neural network, demystifying the omnipotence that is too often attributed to AI.
Starting with a model that elaborates in real time, the interactive installation explores and narrates the generative power of Artificial Intelligence, to reflect on the social implications, the importance of representation and the risks that data polarisation has in fuelling bias and stereotypes.
"Artificial Intelligence is an area of application and research on which Dotdotdotdot is been experimenting since several years," explains Alessandro Masserdotti, co-founder and CTO of Dotdotdot. "With this project, we chose to delve into the Explainable AI (XAI) strand to give visitors an emotional immersive experience that allows them to visualise the way machine learning models make decisions and generate outputs, to shed light and reflect on the implications this has on our society."
courtesy Dotdotdot
Representing Diversity
With "Data Bugs – AI is a mirror", Dotdotdot presents a reflection on the responsibilities we have in providing data and training a technology that is revolutionising our lives. In an imaginary universe populated by insects, visitors are invited to explore two scenarios where representation and simplification are the two sides of the same coin.
Focusing on machine learning, Dotdotdot presents an installation in which two artificial intelligence models differ in the variety of species they contain in their datasets, proposing an experience in which insects are the protagonists. The dataset based on homogeneous information thus produces similar, stereotypical images (e.g. a black or a red ant), while the dataset based on balanced information, which includes the diversity of types found in nature (there are around 14,000 species of ants in the world), allows the creation of results that - although they may seem alienating at first - come close to the diversity of the reality we experience.
As users move, they interact with the representation of the latent space, activating and deactivating the features that make it up and continuously generating infinite and unique combinations of insects.
Experience shows that it is not the artificial intelligence that creates stereotypes, but the information base, the source data.
Dotdotdot. 20 years of Interaction Design
20 years after its first participation at Fuorisalone, Dotdotdot returns to unveil and explain how technology works: as with the very first 'Explò' project presented in 2004, in which a computer (at the time considered a black box) was exploded, so today the studio explodes a neural network in order to understand the process of AI and presenting it for what it is: a tool for people.
"Data Bugs - AI is a mirror" is part of a strand of research into Artificial Intelligence that the studio began in 2016 and continues to explore through its own projects and with the special advanced education initiatives such as the recent CONNECTION a training program that involves some of the most distinguished voices in innovation and design.
courtesy Dotdotdot
Born in 2004 from the creative minds of its four founders - Laura Dellamotta (architect), Giovanna Gardi (architect), Alessandro Masserdotti (philosopher and interaction designer) and Fabrizio Pignoloni (designer) - Dotdotdot was one of the first studios in Italy to focus on interaction design, i.e. the relationship between people, spaces, technologies and machines, experimenting with visual and sound design to create unique experiences for the public.
Over the years, the studio has pursued various areas of research, while continuing to invest in experimentation and prototyping, culminating in the opening of OpenDot in 2014: a space open to the city, a fab lab dedicated to rapid prototyping, which in ten years has become a centre for research and social innovation.
Dotdotdotdot now has a team of 40 professionals with heterogeneous and multidisciplinary profiles, including architects, designers, interaction designers, developers, engineers, sound designers and experts in storytelling and design strategy, capable of handling every phase of a project: from research to development to design.
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