How might artificial intelligence be used responsibly in museums and heritage settings that have colonial collections and histories? This one-day workshop for those working in museums and heritage is an opportunity to: 

• Learn about and explore definitions and approaches to responsible AI and colonial material.

• Discuss these in the context of participants' own perspectives on and work in the museum/heritage setting.

• Feed into the development of tools and materials to support the sector in the responsible use of AI (in the context of, for example, visitor experience, interpretation, the curation of datasets). 

No prior specialist expertise in either artificial intelligence or decolonising the museum is required.

The workshop is part of a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council/Bridging Responsible AI Divides Programme, based at the University of Sheffield, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam University, University of York, and the Royal Armouries, Leeds.

The event is free to attend and travel and accommodation bursaries are available.  Please register here. 

If you have any questions about the event, please contact joanna.tidy@sheffield.ac.uk

Museums and heritage institutions are increasingly using AI tools such as Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Vision to enhance visitor interaction with their collections as well as in a range of applications for cataloguing and analysing artefacts. At the same time, the role of empire in museums and heritage institutions is increasingly being recognised and the colonial structures and approaches that endure within them to the present day are in the process of being acknowledged and addressed. Bias—especially racial bias—is a well-recognised problem with AI, including how AI algorithms reproduce skewed underlying data, and AI logics are rooted in colonial ways of knowing. A challenge for museums and heritage settings that wish to utilise AI lies in how underlying biases in museum collections and the museum setting, including those rooted in colonial histories, are reproduced, or amplified, through AI data processing and outputs.

 Please register here.