Data Science and AI for Arts and Humanities
Our data science and AI activity in the Arts and Humanities investigates a wide range of topics, from the foundations of responsible and trustworthy AI to developing powerful tools such as virtual and augmented reality techniques, as well as employing data science and AI in digital humanities for natural language processing, large-scale data analytics for languages and to classify cultural heritages to deliver this. For example, in the creative arts, the role of AI in musical creativity and production links with other projects investigating music and social inclusion. We also support programmes looking at trust in AI and big data ethics, as well as digital forensics and making sense of collections.
If you are interested in speaking to someone in regards to any of these activities, or related areas of interest, please get in touch via the Centre email address (cdsai@gla.systa-s.com).
Programme Director: Professor Sarah Cook
Professor of Museum Studies (Information Studies)
We asked Professor Cook to answer a few questions about her background with data science and AI and her hopes for the future of the Centre for Data Science & AI.
Can you tell us about your background in Data Science and AI, and how your experiences have shaped your approach to the programme you'll be directing?
For a number of years I have been researching what contemporary artists have been doing with technology, from mobile data to generative systems to now AI. As part of my work as a curator I have commissioned artworks that reflect on humanity's entanglement with technology, whatever the latest new technology is. Twenty years ago I co-curated an exhibition about 'database imaginaries’ - the shared visions of how the ordered structuring of data builds worlds, how machine memory works, or how the algorithmic manipulation of content shapes discourse. AI is getting us to ask those same questions again but with even greater urgency. AI’s adoption across society has brought underlying data structures into the light, and made visible the labour and resources required to build and sustain them. Because my research often takes place in public, with audiences as participants, and with the exhibitions generating new content and insights in the way that a lab might, I’m hoping this approach will work for the programme at the CDSAI. I strongly believe that the arts and humanities open up a space for collective questioning, criticality and public understanding. What’s needed now is a real interrogation of the capitalist narratives of big tech, such as the industrial deployment of engineered ’solutions’ when the problem that the technology is purporting to solve isn’t even fully understood yet. The arts and humanities are uniquely positioned to bring nuance, historical grounding, and ethical reflection.
What are your key goals and aspirations for the programme you're leading, and what do you hope and/or envision the Centre's impact on the wider University will be?
Despite my current critical lens, I’m genuinely positive in the long view. There are many researchers across the arts and humanities who are using AI in novel ways, and pushing forward mindful use of it in their sectors, such as in the creative industries (art, music) and in museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage organisations. One of my goals for the centre is to bring the lessons from this work to a wider field. Yet I also aim for my role to be to hold space for researchers who don’t just work with AI but do work _about_ AI and the transformational effect it is having on society. Arts and humanities scholars play a crucial role in demonstrating why and how technologies should be deployed—and when they should be questioned. Particularly important is to reflect on what human agency is in relation to technology, and I want the Centre to be a place where such lived experience learning is not only welcomed but encouraged. Through this, the Centre can help the University recognise that technical understandings of AI are nothing with the critical, creative, and contextual ones alongside.
