As AI transforms industries and communities, today, GIG launches a Community Calls Series to explore AI’s diverse impacts and opportunities within our network.
This series will foster collaboration, share knowledge, and equip members with tools to navigate AI’ evolving landscape. We will cover topics such as: AI ethics, its role in supporting makers, and its intersection with ecological sustainability; offering practical insights and meaningful discussions to shape AI’s future within our network and community.
Schedule
This Community Call Series is designed to explore critical accountability issues within the global maker community, focusing on the ethical dimensions of AI use, the protection of vulnerable makers, and the integration of regenerative practices.
Stand-Alone Sessions
These initial sessions set the stage for the core discussions:
AI Generated Images
Date: August 21st at 15:00 CEST
Speakers: Dan Kangori, Geraldine De Bastion
This session will explore the rise of AI-generated images and their impact on truth and trust in the digital age. Participants will learn how to critically analyze and verify images to combat misinformation and manipulation.
Transformers 101: Leveraging Open-Source AI Models for Text, Audio, and Images
Date: September 11th at 15:00 CEST
Speakers: Eric Nitschke (Guest Co-Host), Adriano Belisario
This session will provide a hands-on introduction to open-source AI models, focusing on practical, low-code solutions for working with text, audio, and images.
Core Sessions: AI and the Global Maker Movement
The rapid expansion of AI and data infrastructures significantly contributes to global energy consumption and carbon emissions, disrupts ecosystems and threatens the safeguarding of civic actors in challenging contexts. AI also provides great opportunities for making practices and found respective attention across the global maker community. As with any emerging technology buzz, the key to leveraging these possibilities lies in informed, context-aware application, taking into account both the ethical and ecological implications.
This webinar series, “AI and the Global Maker Movement,” will explore critical accountability issues within our diverse global community. We will examine how to define and practice innovation responsibly, safeguard makers at risk, and uphold our role as stewards of planetary well-being. The series will delve into the ethical dimensions of AI use in global making, the protection of vulnerable makers, and the systemic integration of regenerative practices.
Our goal is to unpack the complex implications of AI in the maker movement and collaboratively develop an “All-Life-Affirming Maker AI Ethics Manifesto” that guides ethical and sustainable practices in this evolving landscape. Join us as we navigate these critical conversations and shape the future of AI in the maker community.
Episode 1: Defining Innovation as a Global Maker Community
Date: September 18th at 14:00 CEST
Speakers: Kersti R. Wissenbach (Guest Moderator), Gilberto, d_labe, Thomas
In this session, we will explore what innovation means within the global maker community. Makers, known for their creativity and resourcefulness, push context and needs driven boundaries of traditional craftsmanship and technology. We will collectively map how diverse local infrastructures and needs; cultural perspectives and open collaboration are shaping the definition of innovation and how this impacts our engagements with AI.
Episode 2: AI and Makers at Risk
Date: October 2nd at 14:00 CEST
Speakers: Kersti R. Wissenbach (Guest Moderator), Nawres Arif, Konstantin Leonenko, Annie Zaman
This episode of the series will focus on the diverse risks makers working in conflict zones are exposed to in times of ever more sophisticated technological advancements.
We will explore how AI technologies create new front lines in the strive of makers to bring their skills to the support of people in conflict zones. Whilst new technologies can be used to enhance safety, they are bearing exponential risks of exposing makerspaces as targets for violence in areas where they play crucial roles. In this event we will identify which types of support mechanisms are urgently required in order to create needs-driven safeguarding mechanisms and explore how existing safeguarding mechanisms from the rights defenders community can play a supportive role.
Episode 3: AI and Ecology
Date: October 16th at 14:00 CEST
Speakers: Kersti R. Wissenbach (Guest Moderator)
The Final session of our Ethics and AI series will examine the intersection of AI and ecological sustainability within the maker movement. Whilst we are experiencing buzzing attention on the need for regenerative agendas, little seems to be done to ensure that it becomes more than a new wrapping for the same old practices. What is the difference between sustainability and regeneration and how do we cultivate an ecology driven agenda as a global maker community? How does this relate to our framing of innovation and care?
This is what we will address and the lens through which we will build the foundation for the Maker AI Ethics Manifesto.
AI within GIG – Internal Members Call
Date: October [Exact Date TBD] at 14:00 CEST
Speakers: Facilitation by Fadia and Kersti
An internal session within GIG community to discuss best practices and perhaps produce a working paper.
Kersti Ruth (Cultiva Lab Representative)
Kersti is the founder of Cultiva Lab, where she brings her twenty years of experience in working with participatory approaches to shape inclusive and sustainable digital transformation into dialogue with feminist ecology approaches.
The Playlist with these community calls is now out!
