Mix Tapes, Collages, and Other Folk Infrastructure for AI

Abstract

Ten years ago, people made twitterbot mashups as gifts for each other. Thirty years ago, people composed pirated songs into mix tapes for their crushes, and a hundred years earlier, the Victorian aristocracy cut apart postcards and sent funny collages to their friends. Why is so much of human culture about making silly gifts for our friends, by cutting up and rearranging things? And what does that have to do with AI? Most people now engage with AI through immense, closed systems they can’t own or control. But in our field, we remember a time when “AI” meant small programs you could make, run, and share yourself. And it still can be! Imagine a solarpunk future where AI can be small, personal, locally-owned, deeply weird, and giftable. What makes that future happen? This talk explores how casually-creative people have always cut up and rearranged culture to express themselves - and what composable properties of both “old-fashioned” and “new” AI will let us send each other mix-tapes once again.