Berggruen Institute China Center Co-Hosts Workshop on AI and Trust

On November 17 and 18, more than 25 experts from Peking University, Cambridge University, Australian National University, the National University of Singapore and others joined the conference to share their perspectives on how to build trust between humans and AI and to ensure safeguards for humanity.  A network of experts from different disciplines will be established to effectively employ research resources globally.

Professor Huw Price from Cambridge University pointed out, “People are coming to the realization that we are dealing with a technology which is going to be huge in the long run in its impacts on human society. The challenge of how we ensure a beneficial change requires lots of different perspectives.”

Key Takeaways:

• Scientists provided a most up to date overview of AI technology and they sought suggestions from philosophers on ethical and trust-related issues when developing such technologies. One of the questions raised was how we can define a human being with the technological improvement of cyborg systems.

• Experts suggested the government should be a user of AI in public services, a regulator, a promoter for economic growth, an enabler of technology infrastructure, a leveler of impacts, and a protector from harmful effects.

• Philosophers agreed that we should aim to build human-centric and responsible AI, however, it may not be feasible to program non-biological AI to follow ethical principles derived from human experience and human knowledge.

composed by Arswain
machine learning consultation by Anna Tskhovrebov
commissioned by the Berggruen Institute
premiered at the Bradbury Building
downtown Los Angeles
april 22, 2022

Human perception of what sounds “beautiful” is necessarily biased and exclusive. If we are to truly expand our hearing apparatus, and thus our notion of beauty, we must not only shed preconceived sonic associations but also invite creative participation from beings non-human and non-living. We must also begin to cede creative control away from ourselves and toward such beings by encouraging them to exercise their own standards of beauty and collaborate with each other.

Movement I: Alarm Call
‘Alarm Call’ is a long-form composition and sound collage that juxtaposes, combines, and manipulates alarm calls from various human, non-human, and non-living beings. Evolutionary biologists understand the alarm call to be an altruistic behavior between species, who, by warning others of danger, place themselves by instinct in a broader system of belonging. The piece poses the question: how might we hear better to broaden and enhance our sense of belonging in the universe? Might we behave more altruistically if we better heed the calls of – and call out to – non-human beings?

Using granular synthesis, biofeedback, and algorithmic modulation, I fold the human alarm call – the siren – into non-human alarm calls, generating novel “inter-being” sonic collaborations with increasing sophistication and complexity. 

Movement II: A.I.-Truism
A synthesizer piece co-written with an AI in the style of Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, to pay homage to the space of the Bradbury Building.

Movement III: Alarmism
A machine learning model “learns” A.I.Truism and recreates Alarm Call, generating an original fusion of the two.

Movement IV: A.I. Call
A machine learning model “learns” Alarm Call and recreates A.I.Truism, generating an original fusion of the two.

RAVE (IRCAM 2021) https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE