AICON is the AiPact initiative’s interdisciplinary project, connecting citizens, artists and researchers in an exploration of the social-beneficial potential of AI. This collaborative project focuses on empowering communities, allowing them to discover what defines their environment and how they engage with the world.

It revolves around co-creation and takes into consideration cross-disciplinary concepts that do not fit within traditional databases. Ultimately the hope is that this will contribute to democratizing AI, making it understandable and accessible to communities and a re-examination of the values which define a neighborhood and its residents.

The use of Artificial Intelligence promises a transition to open and inclusive practices. The leading question in the Erasmus AiPact Initiative is how the use of Artificial Intelligence can create new opportunities for individuals, organizations and systems while keeping potential risks to a minimum.

AI has become an integral part of our society. However, to many citizens AI is still an abstract and distant concept, not necessarily perceived as beneficial. How can we turn this around? How might we configure and implement AI in a way that serves and augments humanity – a celebration of societies multitude of perspectives and approaches? How can AI tap into their knowledge and experiences?

For true human-centered innovation, we need all human minds. There is a need for inspiring cases that prove it is possible. This requires imagination – and what better way to achieve this than through art?

Rotterdam is a city with major differences in socio-economic position, cultural background, and lifestyle. However, discourse regarding the city is often dominated by a focus on the socio-economic status of citizens, portraying areas as disadvantaged, while positive values are overlooked. Cultural diversity, resilience and a high level of informal networks and services in these areas have given way to initiatives in sports, culture, and entrepreneurship of (inter)national significance.

Super diverse cities deserve a super diverse perspective, which acknowledges and embraces both differences as well as similarities. There is a compelling need for a more sophisticated view on values in various urban areas and communities, especially the next generation. Young people growing up in the city deserve a positive, inclusive and stigma-free representation of their area with which they can identify. With AICON we offer an alternative perspective on values. Co-creating data-driven AI-art will highlight, showcase, and discuss aspects that make citizens proud, regardless of whether the area is considered poor or wealthy in the traditional sense.

A key concept to the project is the term value, which has many meanings and implications from cultural, social and ethical, to economical. Discourse often revolves around economical values while neglecting other perspectives. The process and outcomes of the project will encourage a dialogue regarding values, both on a personal and societal level resulting in a framework relevant for intersectional research. This will be materialized in a value-driven system that assigns ‘non-fungible tokens’ (NFTs) to citizens contributing to the project.

This process will be realized via an AI-based artistic intervention in public space, based on input collected during participation with citizens as well as available data based on previous research, surveys, social media etc. Depending on input, this aiconic visual art intervention is scalable and able to grow accordingly. The project will involve a sustainable (potentially endless) cycle of interaction between artists citizens-scholars, in an upward spiral towards augmented art, science, and society.

AICON is an open invitation to participate in this journey with either ideas, network, experience, funding, knowledge, and/or inspiration to cocreate human-centered innovation.

These are some of the people involved in the AICON project:

• Moniek Buijzen (Academic Lead Erasmus AiPact)
• Frieda Franke (Business Development ErasmusX)
• Annemiek Mi-Jin de Groote (Storyteller, PAR Researcher, Project Management)
• Nanna Kassenaar (Gallery Director, PAR researcher, Project Management)
• Sarina van La Parra (Community Builder, Chance to Influence)
• Roel Lutkenhaus (PAR & DAR Researcher; EUR-New Momentum)
• Shailoh Phillips (Artist, Critical Researcher, Educator)
• Esther Rozendaal (Erasmus Movez Lab, Bitescience)
• Peim van der Sloot (Artist)
• Farshida Zafar (Director ErasmusX)
• Daniëlle Ceulemans (Project manager ErasmuX)

… plus more citizens, more artists, more scholars, more students, more schools, more societal stakeholders.

Below you can find a list with news and updates surrounding the project that we will continuously update throughout the project’s duration:

• Get to know AICON’s newest intern Manon Zamblé in this blog.
• Learn about Costanza Tagliaferri’s experiences after visiting the HefHouse in this article.
• Listen to Peim and Harun, who were invited to talk about Artificial Intelligence on the Ronnies op Zuid podcast. Podcast is in Dutch🇳🇱
• We hosted an event called Stadsgezichten (Faces of the city) where participants created their own NFTs. We display them in our virtual gallery in the Metaverse on Muse.
• You can also view and purchase the collection of NFTs that were made during our Stadsgezichten (Faces of the city) event on Open Sea.
• Listen to Farshida (ErasmusX) and Sarina (Chance to Influence), who were invited to talk about AICON on the Ronnies op Zuid podcast. Podcast is in Dutch🇳🇱
• Download our AICON visual to learn more about the project.
• Read Moniek Buijzen’s piece on why we need art to cocreate the societal impact of AI.
• Enjoy reading this interesting conversation between Shailoh Phillips and Roel Lutkenhaus about Human-Centered AI.

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