Unbearable Lightness of Being Optimized
searching for desirable difficulties in the time of 'ai'
What is it?
A small, initially online series of 'gatherings' for frustrated makers, designers, educators, and technologists who want to get curious about their relationship to their work, their tools, and each other.
We will meet in small groups to confront a few increasingly nagging questions:
- Which parts of our thinking and making could stay effortful, and which parts can we hand off without losing what we care about?
- What alternatives to corporate cloud AI exist, and how far can a few people get using them?
- How do we keep our reliance on each-other intact and deliberate, rather than letting it be replaced by monopolized dependency?
It will be half conversational, philosophical and half hands-on, focused on the tangible.
Over five sessions, we will:
- Build personal maps of which relations we care to keep intimate and protect from default modes of automation.
- Redesign some of our active workflows/pipelines to keep learning when it matters.
- Run local models on our own machines and discover what to look for in capacities and limitations.
- Explore the possibility - and reality - of pooling compute or resources with our chosen communities.
Details
Size: Max 8 participants (mixed backgrounds hopefully).
Format: Five bi-weekly 90-minute sessions (open for discussion)
Place: Online for now on Signal + Jitsi (hope to create local pockets later if it sticks)
Time: Start date will be decided with the group in discussion. (Expect this year tho)
Cost: is commitment. This will need active participation, presence, and a shared agreement to keep conversations private.
If you are curious, a little stuck, and want to explore practical alternatives with a small group, send me a message to join to ride.
Peace out! =)