🐍 Musical snakes, ghosts and machine learning datasets
Kids toys and academic think pieces, lots to chew on
Two months ago, I took a leap and returned to school to start a PhD in child-centric AI. Since then I’ve been relishing the space to explore curious rabbit holes.
I feel like I’m foraging and knitting together stories of my very own. Following the things I care passionately about and want to understand to it’s very core; without worrying about a product roadmap or building a business case.
I’ll share some of those longer knittings in posts like this.This email will stay as is; a monthly collection of all things creative tech, play and fantasy sci-fi.
Alright, let’s get on with it!
Get writing! Here's a prompt to spark new story ideas & bedtime tales.I’m escaping into DnD & Baldurs Gate right now. This week I went to see Dragon and Friends live (with friends), and have been gobbling up anything with Aabria Iyengar. So this story spark is brought to you from ‘Quest Adventure Game’s ‘book of treasures’.
Imagine your character finds or is gifted a shadow speaker; what happens next?
My favourite playful web picks for the month.Make websites tiny ceramic charms with these fortune cookie ‘web charms’ by Spencer
Play a free, table top family game called Junk Nest City by Everest Pimpkin.
You play as a family of tiny borrowers living in a big human home, who have to find objects and decorate their nest without being caught by the humans.
Discover queer stories near you.Queering the Map is a community generated platform for digitally mapping LGBTQ2IA+ stories. I wept finding the stories in my hometown in NSW.
Poke soft knitted snakes to make song. A soft, crotchet musical snake I found whilst reading academic papers from Elisabeth Scholz, Michaela Honauer and Eva Hornecker
Cultivate a sense for where the centre of gravity is with this app by Matt Webb. He also has other experiments with multiplayer + AI collaboration interaction.
Mute distracting notifications, grab a warm cuppa and find a seat in the sun.Excavating AI; The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets by Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen. Labelled datasets that pair image + descriptions are the foundation on which many machine learning systems are built. These labels are inherently subjective and many training datasets contain problematic classifications. This article reminds us that automated interpretation of images is an inherently social and political project, rather than a purely technical one.
A photograph of a woman smiling in a bikini is labeled a “slattern, slut, slovenly woman, trollop.” A young man drinking beer is categorized as an “alcoholic, alky, dipsomaniac, boozer, lush, soaker, souse.” A child wearing sunglasses is classified as a “failure, loser, non-starter, unsuccessful person.” You’re looking at the “person” category in a dataset called ImageNet, one of the most widely used training sets for machine learning.
Something well thunk and beautifully made!Blip Blox is a synthesiser that was funded on kickstarter & pitched to families with kids aged 3+*. I’ve not used a synth, but am very curious to find grown-ups using it, with it’s Fisher Price kiddy aesthetic. A true blend of toy + tool. Chompi is also a cute synth.
*don’t worry, there’s a headphone input.
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