Equipping creative communities to investigate and shape AI
AI is transforming creative industries, from gig economy freelancers to seasoned professionals. Our work investigates how AI is transforming creative industries, and how creative individuals in fields like design, writing, and music will experience a significant shift in how they work in the coming years.
The Lab for AI + Creative Labor investigates the shift underway in our creative communities that is brought about by AI. We do this through empirical research on AI use, by setting standards for the creative deployment of AI in areas such as copyright, labor practices, and the creation of humanistic and scientific knowledge.
Going beyond the application of rules or principles, we situate AI ethics within its political, social, affective, ecological, and economic dimensions. We approach AI ethics from a plurality of perspectives, including traditions of self-formation and those that stress webs of social, ecological, and technical relations. We understand ethics as a world-building project that emerges from histories of domination that shape AI in the present and pushes past these frames to reimagine a relationship between AI and the flourishing of life.
Lab’s Four
Areas of Focus
Empirical Research
Researching AIs use in creative industries
Developing Tools
Providing resources to help creatives adapt to AI-driven futures.
Curricular Development
Launching new curriculum addressing critical topics in AI
Events and Exhibitions
Convening events and curating exhibitions on AI creative labor
Empirical
Research
We seek partnerships to carry out several creative research studies that fall into distinct themes.
AI & Labor
How AI reshapes creative work, labor conditions, and industry power structures.
AI & Creativity
How AI influences artistic identity, skill development, and perceptions of creativity.
AI & Copywrite
Legal frameworks for AI-generated content might balance innovation with the rights of human creators.
Developing Tools
One tool—Creative AI Magnifier—helps creative professionals assess AI’s ethical impacts on labor, culture, and artistic agency, providing insights and case studies to support responsible AI adoption. Try it: www.creativeaimagnifier.com.
New Curriculum
We develop new coursed, like this one—Ethics of Artificial Intelligence—which focuses on the ethical implications of AI by examining its societal impact, potential risks and benefits.
Event & Exhibitions
Our event series connect artists, technologists, and scholars through panels, workshops, and talks exploring ethical impacts and creative potential, collaborating with partners and engaging over 500 participants.
Our
Team
Andrew Shea, Co-Director
Andrew is a designer who focuses on the evolving field of design for social innovation and the role of artificial intelligence in that evolution. He is the founding creative director of MANY Design, a studio that designs physical spaces, collaborative experiences, and platforms to support creative communities and elevate civic, educational, and environmental initiatives. Andrew writings about design for social innovation includes Design for Social Innovation: Case Studies from Around the World (2021), which marks the first attempt to define the global contours of the cultural, economic, and organizational levers propelling design for social innovation forward today, LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation (2016), and Designing for Social Change: Strategies for Community-Based Graphic Design (2012). His design and writing has been featured by publications like Fast Company, Slate, Design Observer, and 99 Percent Invisible. Andrew regularly speaks about design and AI and has served as an advisor and juror for many organizations. At Parsons School of Design, Andrew serves as Associate Dean of School of Design Strategies and Associate Professor of Integrated Design. He received his MFA in Graphic Design from Maryland Institute College of Art.
Sareeta Amrute, Co-Director
Sareeta is an anthropologist who studies race, labor, and class in global tech economies. She served as Data & Society’s inaugural director of research, and then as the founding director of the organization’s Trustworthy Infrastructures program, which explores community-led approaches to building trust online and the possibilities they set in motion. Her book, Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin, is an account of the relationship between cognitive labor and embodiment, told through the stories of programmers from India who move within migration regimes and short-term coding projects in corporate settings. The book was awarded the 2017 Diana Forsythe Prize (conferred jointly by the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing and the Society for the Anthropology of Work), and the 2019 International Convention of Asian Studies Book Prize for the Social Sciences. Sareeta is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design at Parsons, The New School. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago.
Research Assistants
Aditi Dey, Political Science (PhD)
Henry Schroder, Strategic Design & Management (MS)