AI, Platforms, and Culture

How does the confluence of artificial intelligence and social media platforms affect modern culture, defined as what creators create and consumers consume? Generative AI is radically changing the productive output of visual artists, writers, musicians, and others in the creative fields. Social media platforms, and their attendant algorithms for recommendations, behavioral profiling, and monetary objectives, largely control the attention economy. Together, these forces are actively changing culture at both local and global scales.

This research seminar will provide a space for discussing these intertwined forces, with the twin goals of understanding their underpinnings and influencing their future. Seminar participants will be encouraged to go beyond being passive observers, to build technical tools that can provide better understanding of the current of influence. Readings will draw from philosophy of culture, social science theories of communication, and computer science, including human-computer interaction and computer vision and language models.