Sofia Hoek

Assignment: complete your own project from start to finish during your internship.

During my internship at Critical Mass in Utrecht I worked on my own project. I was working with Sophia Hansen on an AI project at the war museum in Overloon, where I got the idea to make my own project about AI-bias.

In short: Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used by students as a source of information and inspiration. At the same time, little thought is given to the systems behind this software and the data on which it is trained. This data always contains forms of bias, because the AI is trained on data produced and selected by humans. This can quickly lead to (unintended) negative output, such as sexism and discrimination.

The goal was to make CMD students in Breda aware of not only AI bias but also of their own prejudices. As a result, they will approach AI software more critically and make their projects more inclusive. It is important for these students not only to become good designers but also to remain critical and ethical.

Bias by Design consists of two parts. The first part consists of posters that are hung up in multiple locations within CMD. There is as little text as possible on these posters; the image is the guiding principle.
The second part is a box located in the central area of CMD. On the top of the box is the question: “Think of a caregiver. And now a leader. What do they look like?” When the box is opened, there is a mirror on the inside of the lid, with four reflective questions. There are also cards inside the box. Students may take these with them. These cards contain simple thinking and doing tasks, such as: “Think about the prompt you wrote to Chat-GPT today. How neutral was the answer?”