2023 Library Series: Animation & Artificial Intelligence - Luke Stark

Animation increasingly defines the cultural contours of the twenty-first century and is broadly used across many forms of digital media. More than just cartooning, puppetry, or CGI, animation is a paradigm involving the projection of qualities perceived as human such as power, agency, will, and personality outside of the self and onto objects in the the environment. In this talk, I argue ChatGPT and similar chatbots powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) can be best understood as animated characters, and that other characteristics of animation-including reliance on stereotypes, obfuscation of human labor, and manipulation of an audience’s emotions-can help us both analyze and respond appropriately to interactive AI technologies and the hyperbolic claims of their promoters.
Speaker Profile
Luke Stark is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies (FIMS) at Western University in London, Ontario. He researches the ethical, historical, and social impacts of computational technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) systems powered by techniques like machine learning (ML). He is particularly animated by how these technologies mediate social and emotional expression, make inferences about people, and are reshaping, for better and worse, our relationships to collective action, our selves, and each other.