Job Vacancies: Responsible AI & Colonial Museum Collections
XXVIS.85 - Sword (khanda) with detachable dagger (katar) and percussion pistol. Purchased after the Great Exhibition of 1851. © Royal Armouries TR.608, used with permission
Museum Visitor Experience and the Responsible Use of AI to Communicate Colonial Collections
Members of the Centre for Drones and Culture core team have been awarded a £200,000, 6-month grant from the UK Research Councils. We are looking for staff to join us!
This is an exciting opportunity to work as part of an interdisciplinary team spanning Politics and International Relations, English, Computer Science, and Digital Culture, and develop knowledge exchange and non-academic impacts with and for partners and stakeholders in the museums and heritage sector.
The New Indian Section, South Kensington Museum. (Note the extensive displays of weapons on the walls.) Illustrated London News, May 22, 1880,
501. © Royal Armouries DI 2016–0270, used with permission
About the Project
The project builds on CDAC’s work with the museum sector on pressing issues related to ethics and technology. It aims to scope the responsible use of AI in the context of the museum, where AI tools such as Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Vision are increasingly being used to enhance visitor interaction with museum collections. A well-recognised problem with AI is bias, including how AI algorithms reproduce skewed underlying data. For museums, a challenge for responsible AI use lies in how underlying biases in museum collections, including those rooted in their colonial history and origin, are reproduced through AI data processing and outputs.
The project will investigate the use of AI to enhance museum visitor experience, specifically in relation to biases in AI which stem from the colonial history of museum collections. The team will work closely with their partner the Royal Armouries, the UK's national museum of arms and armour and one of the world's oldest museums. The Royal Armouries' exploration of the history of war encompasses interpretations engaging wider issues relating to science and technology, politics, law, art and poetry, and the human experience.
The project will involve scoping of the colonial form and origin of underlying data within museum collections, mapping relevant actors, stakeholders, interests, and power relations within the setting and context, engaging with a wider community of museums, heritage institutions, and industry stakeholders to assess existing approaches to responsible AI for use or development in the setting, and work with these communities to develop and propose novel responsible AI tools and practices. Whilst the project has been designed primarily to guide AI use by museums and heritage institutions that hold collections that have colonial origins, the focus on AI and the colonial character of underlying data forms a 'way in' to the wider question of how AI processes reproduce and amplify the biases produced through other relations and asymmetries of power within underlying data sets, whether these pertain to race, class, or gender.
Job Opportunities
We are recruiting for the following roles, all of whom will be based in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield for the duration of project. Please follow the links for more details:
The project will run from the start of February 2024 until the end of July 2024 and will be led by Dr Joanna Tidy. Please feel free to email her (joanna.tidy[at]sheffield.ac.uk) to have an informal conversation about any of these roles and the project prior to making an application.