Can AI be the "prompt," not the answer, in creative work?

Event Image
Hope Schroeder portrait

The Visual Arts, Culture, and Media Speaker Series presents a talk by Hope Schroeder (MIT Media Lab and MIT Center for Constructive Communication) on the implications of AI for human creativity. Following the talk, please join us for a reception in McKenzie Commons.

Abstract: AI is swiftly changing the creative process, not only affecting our creation of art, but also our subjective interpretation of it. The recent wave of generative text-to-image AI models raised questions about originality, bias, and authorship in many creative and humanistic fields. Simultaneously, ubiquitous text-based AI systems like ChatGPT prime users to think of the outputs they provide as answers ready to be used, rather than as inputs for users to consider. What if, instead of seeing AI as providing answers, we saw these systems as providing "prompts" to our own creative processes? Drawing on both artistic work and recent empirical studies of AI inputs to creativity, I discuss the opportunities and ongoing challenges of using AI systems in these roles, with an eye toward effectively designing human-AI systems that augment human agency and expertise in creative and interpretive work. 

Speaker: Hope Schroeder is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Center for Constructive Communication. Her work investigates, develops, and evaluates human-AI systems for creativity, dialogue, and sensemaking, drawing on her background in natural language processing and computational social science. She has interned at Microsoft Research Labs on the Computational Social Science ('23) and Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI ('24) teams. Prior to MIT, she received an MSc in Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute as a Clarendon Scholar ('20), and studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford ('19).

Sponsors:
Visual Culture Program
William A. Kern Endowment
School of Communication
School of Individualized Study

Please submit interpreting requests through myaccess.rit.edu.


Contact
Robert Gordon-Fogelson
Event Snapshot
When and Where
April 03, 2025
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Room/Location: A205
Who

Open to the Public

Interpreter Requested?

No

Topics
artificial intelligence
creativity and innovation
interdisciplinary studies
technology, the arts, and design