On the relationship between representation and discrimination in the discourse on Artificial Intelligence and its relevance for immersive virtual environments – a stocktaking for political education
Online Symposium on 28.09.2023, 10 a.m. (CET)
Speaker: Dr. Deborah Schnabel, Director of the Bildungsstätte Anne Frank Frankfurt, Working Group “KIRA – KI and Racism“
Significantly, for the negotiation of the metaverse, generative AI will have an increasing impact on immersive virtual spaces. Adaptive and reactive content in such environments will increasingly be produced by AIs. In this course, it is conceivable that AI language models will build personalized worlds, essentially affirming users’ attitudes, reinforcing them in problematic attitudes, and forcing ideological cocooning effects. The already low inhibition threshold in the metaverse does the rest. Structural aspects of AI racism will have an exponential effect in immersive environments: Racist echo chambers in virtual worlds will inevitably leak outward, shaping society – and in turn serving as a source for AI content generators.
What are the conditions of possibility for using AI in immersive environments that is sensitive to racism and anti-Semitism? What ethical, social, political, and legal benchmarks need to be set for this form of automated worldbuilding? What could frameworks in compliance and corporate policy look like? What possibilities of objection must legislators have? And what is the significance of civil society engagement in this context?