Futures Atlanta

April 27, 2024January 13, 2025
project
by nhowell8

Children are growing up in a world shaped by AI. New educational approaches are needed, not only on how AI works, but also and especially for children to develop their own creative agency and voice in how they choose to respond to AI and engage technology to support their own aspirations and communities.

We develop and host workshops where children age 10-12 use AI tools to create visual artistic narratives to reflect on their hopes and concerns for local issues in Atlanta. The visualizations are a way to help express and engage in dialogue around civic futures in Atlanta; e.g., how can Atlanta rethink its MARTA train stations, playgrounds, pedestrian traffic safety, or public art?

Process of workshops. 1. Pick a place (children chose Piedmont Park, Clarkston Library, Fernbank Museum). 2. Form Councils (children formed Piku Niku Council, Cat Lovers Council, and Oogy Woogy Council). 3. Reimagine Places (shows images made with generative AI showing a cleaner, larger pond at the park, a library with outdoor bean bags, and the natural history museum with dinosaurs come to life)

Partners

Supratim Pait is the lead PhD student researcher.

Professor Michael Nitsche, director of the Digital World & Image Group, is the co-PI and day-to-day collaborator.

These workshops are done in partnership with Decatur Makers, an all-ages community makerspace.

The workshops are informed by the PAIZ (Participatory AI for Schoolchildren) project led by Dr. Sumita Sharma.

The Center for Puppetry Arts graciously advised on puppet designs and provided puppet designs for an initial pilot workshop.

Funding

This project is funded by a seed grant from the AIAI Network, the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network, split between Georgia Tech and Decatur Makers.

This project is also funded by a grant from the Georgia Tech IDEaS (Institute for Data Engineering and Science), split between Georgia Tech and Decatur Makers.

Papers

Sumita Sharma, Noura Howell, Leena Ventä-Olkkonen, Netta Iivari, Grace Eden, Heidi Hartikainen, Marianne Kinnula, Eva Durall, Michael Nitsche, Jussi Okkonen, Supratim Pait @supratimpait , Elisa Rubegni, Wouter Sluis-Thiescheffer, Lonneke van der Velden, Uttishta Sreerama Varanasi. 2024. Promoting Criticality with Design Futuring with Young Children. Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI).

Supratim Pait, Noura Howell, Michael Nitsche. 2024. PlayFutures: Imagining Civic Futures with AI and Puppets. Position paper at the workshop Child-Centred AI at CHI 2024.