ALTERNATIVE FUTURES! FOSTERING ECO-DIGITAL AGENCY IN GENERATIVE AI WORKSHOPS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

Abstract

The ability to imagine alternatives is important in fostering hope for more just futures. However, it is not easy. In fact, it has been argued that the decline of imagination has prevented us from finding effective solutions to urgent planetary crises and alternatives to capitalism. In this paper, I present how the challenge was methodologically tackled and ways to spark imagination searched for in an ongoing research project. The paper presents methodological reflections, observations, and critical considerations from a workshop experiment which an AI image generator was used as a tool for imagining. The starting point was that young people's perceptions, hopes, and fears about the future matter because the future concerns them particularly. Yet, their voices often remain unheard. The pedagogical approach was a combination of feminist, critical, anarchist, speculative, and utopian pedagogies. The use of an AI image generator allowed the playful creation of images, simultaneously providing opportunities to critically examine AI’s ethics and sustainability. It fostered the participants’ $2 in creating a collective space in which hopes and fears were voiced and heard, and today’s society and needs for its transformation discussed. Yet, there are issues in using generative AI as a research tool. Proprietary applications prevent researchers from evaluating their ethical foundations and sustainability. With datasets consisting of images harvested from the past and present, the question is to what extent it is possible to imagine something completely new and previously unimaginable with them.