‘Responsible AI Futures’ Hybrid Seminar – Srravya Chandhiramowuli
2025-05-15 16:00 - 17:00 UTC | Inspace, Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, United Kingdom
Millions of workers, particularly in global south regions, are engaged in creating large-scale annotated datasets used for training and fine-tuning models, as well as making AI work as intended by verifying and correcting its outcomes where required. Yet, there is little recognition, in AI development or governance, of the role of data workers or the challenges they face. In this talk, I bring attention to the contributions as well as concerns arising from data work through ethnographic insights into two data work projects, one in which data work is structured as a repetitive, unitised activity and another which aims to recover data work from such reductive frames using feminist-led, participatory approaches. By tracing the work practices, values and tensions across the two projects, I highlight how data work, including efforts to responsibilize it, is caught within and shaped by the globalised supply chains that prioritise efficiency and expansion. Critically examining data work allows us to confront the scalar logics that underpin dataset (and indeed AI) production and to intervene in them as part of envisioning responsible AI futures.

Bio
Srravya Chandhiramowuli is a PhD candidate in the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Design Informatics and a PhD affiliate at the Centre for Technomoral Futures. Her research closely follows the on-ground practices of dataset production for AI, bringing particular attention to systemic challenges and frictions in data and AI pipelines. Building on scholarship in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), Srravya’s research seeks to contribute towards just and equitable AI futures.

Watch the recording here:

Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI
2025-08-07 - 2025-08-31
An exhibition of new art commissions presenting seven outstanding UK-based artists aimed at exploring and enriching the responsible AI ecosystem through artistic expression, and premiered for the 2025 Edinburgh Summer Festivals.
Tipping Point explores how artists can help us more wisely respond to the present realities and near-future horizons of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Featuring seven newly commissioned artworks from across the UK, the exhibition presents new ways of thinking about today’s AI, the futures we want and the communities needed to build it. Artists include Louise Ashcroft, Julie Freeman, Wesley Goatley, Identity 2.0, Rachel Maclean, Kiki Shervington-White, Studio Above & Below.
Commissioned artworks, which range from digital installations to sculptural interventions, zines and comedy sketches, are set to address themes that reimagine AI uptake, inspire activism and resilience, and showcase artistic creativity in the field. These themes align with BRAID’s mission to build public awareness, break down structural barriers in AI, and reimagine responsible AI perspectives and practices, providing a platform for artists to share their visions and for audiences to reflect on the role of AI in our society.
Representing more than an exhibition, the project is a step towards better, more thoughtful conversations about the future of AI in our lives, and we look forward to working with the artists across the year to bring these conversations to life.
Exhibition Details
Dates: Mon-Sun, 7 – 31 Aug, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
This art commissioning programme is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and delivered by BRAID in partnership with Inspace at the Institute for Design Informatics, with support from Better Images of AI.
Image credit: Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Crafting Resistance: A Zine-Making Workshop on Everyday Activism Workshop
2025-08-08 12:00 - 14:00
Join us for ‘Crafting Resistance,’ a drop-in, hands-on zine-making workshop designed to archive your everyday moments of resistance and inspire you to find new ways to critically engage with and resist the unwanted and pervasive incursion of artificial intelligence into various aspects of our lives. This interactive session will guide you through the process of creating your zine and allow us to reflect on the importance of documenting and sharing modes of resistance.
The workshop draws inspiration from Identity 2.0’s collaboration with a diverse range of activists for their featured project, Issue: 404.
This workshop is free, with activity taking 10-20 mins. Book your place here to secure your spot or just drop-in if you prefer. Participants with tickets are guaranteed entry and drop-in will be on a first come first served basis if capacity is full.
Crafting Resistance: A Zine-Making Workshop on Everyday Activism Tickets, Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM | Eventbrite
Facilitators: Savena Surana and Arda Awais from Identity 2.0
Date: Fri 8 August 2025
Time: 12:00 -14:00 | Free/Drop-in
Activity Duration: Approx. 10-20mins
Audience: Age of 12 + (anyone under 18 should be accompanied by an adult)
Location: Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT
Venue Access Info: Bayes Centre | AccessAble
Date: Fri 8 August 2025
Time: 12:00 -14:00 | Free/Drop-in
Activity Duration: Approx. 10-20mins
Audience: Age of 12 + (anyone under 18 should be accompanied by an adult)
Location: Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT
Venue Access Info: Bayes Centre | AccessAble

This workshop is one of a series of events begin held as part of the Tipping Point: Artist responses to AI exhibition.
Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI – BRAID UK

Comedic Tools for Grappling with AI
2025-08-08 12:00 - 14:00
Join us for ‘Comedic Tools for Grappling with AI,’ an interactive workshop led by comedy-adjacent artist Louise Ashcroft, which explores the potential for humour and speculative design to shine light on present-day societal issues. Using the current proliferation of AI hype as a backdrop, the workshop will encourage acts of community resilience and empowerment through collaborative brainstorming and hands-on activities. Come along to create and prototype your own whimsical AI gadgets using paint, drawing, and simple model-making techniques.
This workshop is free. Book your place here:
Comedic Tools for Grappling with AI Tickets, Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM | Eventbrite
Facilitator: Louise Ashcroft
Date: Fri 8 August 2025
Time: 12:00 -14:00 | Free/Ticket | Registration is preferred, but drop-ins are also welcome
Audience: Age of 12 + (anyone under 18 should be accompanied by an adult)
Location: Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT
Venue Access Info: Bayes Centre | AccessAble
This workshop is one of a series of events begin held as part of the Tipping Point: Artist responses to AI exhibition.
Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI – BRAID UK

Artist Panel & Exhibition Opening
2025-08-08 15:00 - 20:30 | The Bayes Centre, The University of Edinburgh 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh, EH8 9BT, United Kingdom
Book your ticket here
ARTIST PANEL
Re-envisioning creative and critical engagement with AI through art
Speakers: Wesley Goatley, Rachel Maclean, Kiki Shervington-White, Studio Above&Below
Date: Fri 8 August 2025
Time: 15:00-16:30 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT
Venue Access Info: Bayes Centre | AccessAble
Join us at the Bayes Centre for a dynamic panel discussion featuring artists Wesley Goatley, Rachel Maclean, and Kiki Shervington-White. Collectively, their works delve into the intersections of historical technological advances and contemporary AI developments, employing critical and speculative design, installation, interactive art, community engagement, and filmmaking. These artworks are not only designed to inspire us creatively but also to challenge us politically. How can art best serve as a powerful tool for empowering our creativity while critically exploring and advocating for more responsible, sustainable, and ethical futures in technology?

OPENING RECEPTION
Date: Fri 8 August 2025
Time: 18:00-20:30 | Free/Ticketed
Locations:
Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB [Fringe Venue 574]
G.07 at Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB [Fringe Venue 422]
Venue Access Info: Inspace | AccessAble and Location | School of Informatics
Join us at Inspace and Informatics Forum, to meet the artists behind the work and for the opening reception of Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI, and Authenticity Unmasked: Unveiling AI-Driven Realities Through Art, celebrating and presenting two captivating exhibitions featuring ten new art commissions from the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) art commission programme and BRAID funded project Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI Technology to Empower Creatives (CREA-TEC), for the 2025 Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
This evening reception features artworks by artists Louise Ashcroft, Julie Freeman, Wesley Goatley, Identity 2.0, Rachel Maclean, Kiki Shervington-White, Studio Above & Below at Inspace and artworks by Georgia Gardner, Kinnari Saraiya, dmstfctn at Informatics Forum.
Join this event to discover how artists are opening up new perspectives on AI, envisioning desired futures, and exploring the communities essential for shaping them.

Please book the tickets for the events you would like to attend. If you have any enquiries about the events and the venue, please contact us at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk .

Image credit: Rare Metals 2 by Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN
www.hbarakat.com
aixdesign.co/posts/archival-images-of-ai

Book your ticket here

Openness and AI in culture, arts and humanities: a BRAID roundtable
2025-11-24 10:30 - 16:00 | Ada Lovelace, Nuffield Foundation, 100 Saint John Street, London, EC1M 4EH
Join us for a roundtable discussion to critically engage with the evolving intersections of openness, AI, and cultural knowledge.

In the era of data-driven AI, traditional notions of “openness” are being rapidly redefined. From Big Tech companies branding themselves as “open,” to AI models that selectively disclose only parts of their systems, claims of “openness” often obscure more than they reveal, stretching or misapplying the term beyond its original meaning.
In cultural heritage, academic and creative contexts, “openness” has a long and celebrated history, linked to values and practices of access, transparency, collaboration, reuse and public benefit. From the OpenGLAM movement to Open Access publishing, open source software and open research principles and practices, communities have built infrastructures, policies and workflows to promote openness, supporting data-driven research, creative reuse and public engagement.
Yet, publicly funded and openly licensed datasets are increasingly being scraped into commercial AI systems without consent or attribution, resulting in proprietary outputs that undermine the very spirit of openness that those datasets intended to promote. Legal developments like the EU AI Act add complexity by exempting so-called “open source” models without clearly defining “open.” This vagueness further enables “open-washing,” allowing AI stakeholders -from data owners to developers- to evade true transparency by keeping critical components such as training data, model weights, and even outputs closed.
Yet, openness should not be seen as a problem to be fixed or merely regulated, but as an opportunity. Instead of merely mitigating the challenges of commercial AI systems, or compromising our principles of openness, we must reimagine the technical, sociocultural, and legal foundations of AI toward more transparent, collaborative, and ethically grounded future systems and practices rooted in openness. By investing in open, community-driven AI infrastructures, openly licensed datasets, and open-source models, we have an opportunity to build systems that serve the public good and foster innovation beyond the confines of dominant corporate platforms. These open and collaborative practices can also more meaningfully represent the interests of individuals, researchers, creative communities and cultural stakeholders beyond the classic remits of the creative industries, but equally crucial for our cultural fabric.
Open-source, community-driven AI is not just a technical initiative—it is a democratic one. It empowers researchers, educators, cultural practitioners, activists, and civil society to co-create a future where Responsible and Ethical AI is grounded in its true spirit: collaborative, transparent, and serving the public good.
This event will bring together researchers, creators, legal experts, cultural heritage professionals, activists, and members of the open-source AI community to critically engage with the evolving intersections of openness, AI, and cultural knowledge and to re-imagine how a true open, commons-based AI could be created.
This event is being organised by BRAID fellows Anna-Maria Sichani, Paula Westenberger and Nick Bryan-Kinns.
Find out more and register: Openness and AI in culture, arts and humanities: a BRAID roundtable Tickets, Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite
