A Thousand Cassandras: Now is a Good Time to Think About the Future
NOTICINGS
Hello! 👋This is Rachel Coldicutt welcoming you to the second edition of Noticings, Careful Trouble’s newsletter. This one is mostly about the Future.
I’m writing this in mid-October 2023, and while I’m sure no one is reading our newsletter for updates on the world at large, it is not possible to write about what might come next without recognising the present. The humanitarian crisis impacting Palestinian and Israeli people is devastating – and for want of knowing what else to do, profits from our Teemill store will be donated to the Save the Children Emergency Relief Fund for the rest of 2023.
Foresight and Digital Power
This week we're publishing A Thousand Cassandras, a report we wrote with Mallory Knodel for Open Society Foundations at the beginning of 2022. While 18 months may be a long time in technology, it is not so long at all in power. Having interviewed experts from global think tanks, futures labs, research and training institutes, industry, aid organisations and advocacy projects we're fascinated to find that the conclusions we made then are just as relevant now: namely, that digital rights organisations are extremely good at understanding the future consequences of technologies. However, they often lack the power and status of better resourced actors in industry and government; digital rights organisations means they are quite often ignored or overlooked when they raise concerns.
This is a pattern that we think is being repeated right now in the UK: industry is shaping the agenda for the coming AI Safety Summit while the contributions of UK digital civil society organisations are being minimised.
In case you missed it, and I can't believe you did, we're responding to this by hosting the AI and Society Forum, a gathering for a 150 people from digital rights and campaigning organisations on 31 October. We have a wonderful line-up of speakers coming together, including cognitive scientist Dr Abeba Birhane, the TUC's Mary Towers and a vibrant, participatory afternoon of Unconference sessions. Expect sessions on AI and the climate emergency, justice, labour, hope, and who gets to shape the future. The last few tickets (some paid, most free) will be made available this week; you can sign up to be notified when they're available.
Noticing the Present to Inform the Future
Foresight is not an exclusive process that can only happen in fancy meeting rooms. Foresight Lead Anna Williams and Research Lead Dominique Barron have been pulling together some resources to explain our relational approach in more detail. You can read them here - and if you're particularly keen on Noticing, feel free to add any signs and signals of the automation of everyday life to the Everyday Automation Observatory. And if you'd like to work with us to weave careful, relational visions of the future, then please do get in touch.
Out and About
A quick round up of conferences and events you can catch us at over the coming weeks.
Sat 22 October: I'll be giving a talk that's probably titled "Should This Exist?" at the Oxford Generative AI Summit
Tues 31 October: AI and Society Forum at the Wellcome Collection in London
Weds 1 November: I'm on a panel with Urvashi Aneja (Digital Futures Lab) and Sasha Brown (DeepMind) called Ethics in the Machine at the Science Gallery in London, as part of the AI: Who's Looking After Me programme
Thurs 16 Nov: Our Head of Research Anna Dent will be speaking about Community Tech at this Centre for Sociodigital Futures event in Bristol
Meanwhile, if you want to get involved in Community Tech, the Community of Practice are gathering on Discord (more details, including the community care charter, here) and, coming up in later in November, an in-person gathering at Stretford Hall in Manchester (more on that soon)
And in terms of events just past, I spent a few days at the Labour Party Conference last week with my colleague, Policy Researcher Tom McGrath. Among other things, I took part in a Labour Digital panel on how technology can play a part in growth, and a British Academy roundtable on AI regulation. We were particularly delighted that Shadow Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy Alex Davies-Jones supported our campaign to make tech work for everyone.
Lastly!
A quick round-up of interesting things:
Cooperatives UK are holding a Hackathon in London next week
The folks at Changeist, Scott Smith and Susan Scott-Smith, have a new book out called Future Cultures
Philosopher and data scientist Damien P. Williams recently shared this extraordinary Working Bibliography on Mastodon, which will guide curious readers round the fields of race and tech, cognition, data, and AI
And to sign off, I'm obliged to ask you to buy one of our T-shirts, because I'm pretty sure we all want to science as woke as possible.
Take care out there
Thanks for reading. If you're a fan of the newsletter, we'd love it if you could forward this on to anyone else who you think might be interested.
If you want to read more from us, take a look at our websites – Careful Industries and Promising Trouble.
