This Substack is about Gracious AI.
‘But what is Gracious AI?’
I was asked this question last Friday whilst on stage in an ethics of AI panel discussion on MET Ams - a conference where leading voices from around the globe gathered in Amsterdam to showcase the potential of AI, AR, VR, XR, 3D and Web3.
I shared the stage with Thomas Wolf, co-founder of Hugging Face, one of the largest Open-Source AI communities in the world, and dr. Niya Stoimenova, heading Reliable AI at DEUS.ai. It was moderated by Monique van Dusseldorp.
My answer was something like: Gracious AI is AI designed with elegance and dignity in mind. AI that is built and used from a perspective of interconnectedness, over separation. AI that is built to evolve, change, and morph as nature changes and morphs. Not following a set of rules or imposed ethics, but rather following a set of living and emerging principles. Gracious AI can be seen as an extension of ethical AI, encompassing a more holistic, embodied and regenerative perspective. It includes AI systems that promote sustainable practices, foster awareness and conscious experience, enhance human capabilities, engage all our senses, expand our creative potential, foster inclusive interactions, regenerate the earth in partnership with us, support decentralized business models, and contribute positively to society in a broader sense. It’s a whole bunch.
The evolutionary wave supporting the emergence of gracious AI
As a futurist I am someone to observe evolution and to see patterns. An important trend to keep in mind in the coming five years, is that we will be moving from a paradigm of control and willpower, to a paradigm of grace.
We come from a long lineage of humans who have felt that they had to conquer nature in order to protect their tribe and their families. A phase in human history during which we were mainly interested in evolving our cognition, our rational intelligence, in order to create comfort and safety against ‘cruel’ nature. During this time we have felt separated from nature, isolated within our minds, seeing our bodies as mere brain taxis. And we designed technology from this worldview. Technology was mainly imagined and invented to create a stable and safe world, free from the perceived whims and terrors of nature.
This way of operating and designing is crumbling, as we have drifted so far away from the principles of nature and the universe, that it seems they are calling us back. A new consciousness is arising, and this consciousness operates less from the Cartesian notion of ‘I think therefore I am’, and more from ‘I am’ and ‘I feel therefore I am’. An entirely different way of operating that will take us from control, to grace.
We see signs of this in the crumbling of the systems and structures that were the foundations of our society. But what may look like decay, is really metamorphosis.
In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who “knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic decay. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.”
And so we will see a lot of decay in the coming decade, a lot of chaos, but remember that what resides within our cocoon, is grace, a butterfly fully forming, an emergent new way of being and operating that is entirely in tune with the principles of nature and the universe at large. This is why studying nature and listening to nature is a soft medicine for the soul in these times of radical transformation. It also may explain why this time-lapse of the butterfly metamorphosis is something I can watch over and over again…
Artificial Intelligence in this new paradigm is not a ‘saving grace’ claiming to take charge and build a fort of security and safety, but rather a form of living grace - a collaborative force, a force of natural intelligence, supporting our diversity, our sovereignty, our dignity.
Still, to many, this sounds abstract. And that’s OK. It’s my mission with this Substack to give substance to ‘Gracious AI’ over the coming months, not all at once, and with the help of other AI ethics pioneers who bring their own perspectives and projects in the mix.
For now, let me show you some examples from my own work, and how I explain Gracious AI for instance during keynote talks or workshops.
Gracious AI design x regenerative materials
Gracious AI serves the human body, mind, and spirit. It serves nature. It serves the whole, a win-win for everyone. Sounds idealistic? I don’t think it does. We can turn Artificial Intelligence into a force of Natural Intelligence.
In this video you see speculative skins, digital twins of something that will one day emerge in physical form - hopefully. For now, these artful objects are to stimulate the imagination. It is something I’m working on for my PhD that I’m starting in 2024 in Italy, wearables designed with AI, to simulate what truly regenerative materials and the future of fashion could look like.
The first wearable you see are underpants made from mycelium. You can wear it one day, and deposit it into soil the next, so that the cycle of growing your own base materials can start again. In this future we would all have a biomaterial 3D printer at home, printing the very garments we need from our own harvest, creating regenerative, gracious cycles. Before you deposit, you can let an AI sensor analyze information from your bodily fluids - giving you health data and generating a personalized perfume, to attract exactly the right partner for you based on your scanned data. There we go, the future of dating - powered by nature and AI ☺︎.
Designing textiles with gracious AI can also include nourishing our bodies in more personalized ways. Like you see the second wearable, showing you microbial materials made from and with bacteria. Scientists are finding out more and more about the microbiome’s impact on our mental, physical and emotional wellbeing, and on our feeling of connection to the natural world. Can we design materials that support our microbiome during the day, and give us data on what to eat & drink for optimal gut health?
Or finally, the big dream, can we become photosynthetic? We designed this yellow wearable inspired by pollinators. Asking, instead of designing drone bees and let real bees go extinct, can we become the walking flowers that the bees need in order to survive? Can we be the ones giving off glucose as a consequence of wearing textiles that photosynthesize for us? Textiles that empower us to be as radiant as we can?
Prototyping these speculative wearables isn’t only a digital endeavor. The process of inventing and applying Gracious AI is just as much analogue and messy, as it is digital. In this case, it is about getting our hands dirty and experimenting with making biomaterials for our own learning and enjoyment, and so that we can teach the machine what it means to have hands and bodies that create. Examples of these biomaterials are what you see in the end shot of the video.
Some final words
As you may have heard, last week was a big week for AI ethics with an executive order for AI oversight from the Biden administration, and of course the British Prime Minister’s AI safety summit featuring many heavyweight political leaders from around the globe and the obligatory Elon Musk. What we learn from these regulatory efforts, although necessary, is that mainstream discussion on AI is not around gracious AI - and some people worry if the open-source, ethical, and Gracious AI initiatives can keep up with Big Tech. But what I learn from initiatives like Hugging Face and my own work and field, is that there is a swarm of open-source initiatives also being funded, built and widely used today. It is maybe not as visible in the media, but if you look closely the infrastructure and blueprint of Gracious AI is already emerging, and it is up to us to act on it today. By surfing the waves of the paradigm shift from control to grace, we have the opportunity to collaborate with the creative intelligence of the universe, and design new AI systems and shapes that blend ecology, technology, spirituality, and somatics, leading to truly Gracious AI. So, let’s do it!
♡ Lisanne
Wearables and biomaterials in the slides were designed in collaboration with Oliver Ellmers (Tech director, 3D artist), Bela Rofe (Biomaterial artist + assistant researcher), and Tom Schwaiger (Art direction + graphic design).
Midjourney prompt for cover image: Gracious AI working with biomaterials - getting its hands dirty, a machine, nature and human collaboration