CIA to explore ethics surrounding technology, AI and art this year

Image: Stimulation Driven Rowing Games, a rowing machine-style game created by CIA adjunct professors Matthew Beckwith ’06 and Tony Calabro ’06 that serves as a physical therapy tool for paraplegics, will be part of FREE PLAY: Innovative Ohio Game Design this fall in Reinberger Gallery. Image courtesy of XRtistry. 

The ethics of technological innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) as they relate to art and creative work will be a major focus of Cleveland Institute of Art programming this academic year. The timing couldn’t be more crucial. Artists and designers everywhere are grappling with what such advancements could mean for them, especially in rapidly changing creative-career fields. 

At CIA, faculty and staff are already working diligently to put—and keep—the College at the forefront of these issues. 

For example, last year, CIA faculty participated in the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ inaugural Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum to learn about and confront the challenges and opportunities AI could create for the College’s curricula. 

The College’s efforts are ramping up this fall semester with a full slate of technoethics programming designed to facilitate questions and seek answers to challenging topics—environmental impact, copyright concerns, workforce implications—in a community setting. 

“These conversations are complicated. We need to continue them,” says Kari Weaver, director of CIA’s Jane B. Nord Center for Teaching + Learning. “Our mission is about cultivating creative leaders—not just having people who can utilize technology. We want innovative, ethical, thoughtful leaders— and I think that takes a really specific approach.” 

Weaver and Nikki Woods ’12, CIA’s director of exhibitions and galleries, 

are leading the College’s technoethics public programming, which so far includes a Reinberger Gallery exhibition, lecture and panel discussion. The through line is that participants will 

hear, share and experience diverse viewpoints. 

Discussion topics 

CIA students are concerned about the environmental impact of AI—notably the increased electricity demand and water consumption the computer servers require, Weaver explained. However, they also worry about what it means for the value of their education and potential career opportunities. 

And like students across the world, they want to feel encouraged that their academic institution is equipped to lead them in the right direction. A goal of this year’s technoethics programming is to create cross-institutional dialogue through a collaborative AI initiative with the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design, which Weaver is heading. Thus, through CIA’s leadership, students and employees from AICAD’s 36 institutions can confront real-time concerns, questions and interests together. 

“We want students to be able to choose their own ethical positions,” Weaver says. “We want to foreground that, but you don’t want to endanger their workforce preparedness. We want to open up as many choices for them as possible.”

Students are also concerned about copyright rights of their artistic work and potential exploitation from AI, Woods says. That’s also why CIA wants to spearhead such learning, “so we can be knowledgeable about the technology and not be used by the technology.” 

Technoethics programming 

Though not related to AI, Reinberger Gallery’s fall exhibition, FREE PLAY: Innovative Ohio Game Design, will help provide some of that knowledge by demonstrating positive uses of technology on creativity. The exhibition explores video games not only as a source for entertainment, but as powerful media for critical inquiry, experiential learning and creative exploration. Opening November 7, FREE PLAY will be the first of CIA’s public events under the technoethics theme. 

“It’s really important that the gallery serves as an experimental testing site to explore ideas that are really relevant to our students, to contemporary art and to the moment,” says Woods, adding that FREE PLAY will include video games created by game developers not affiliated with the College as well as games CIA faculty helped create. 

For example, XRtistry, an XR/VR production company created by CIA adjunct professors Matthew Beckwith ’06 and Tony Calabro ’06, will show its rowing machine-style Stimulation Driven Rowing Games, created in consultation with a veterans medical center as a physical therapy tool for paraplegics. Animation faculty member Robert Lauer ’17 and Game Design professor and division chair Steven Gutierrez also contributed to the game. 

To complement the exhibition, Reinberger Gallery will host a Lunch on Fridays panel discussion November 7 featuring several of the game developers represented in the exhibition. It will be moderated by Lauer, an accomplished game designer who organized Free Play with Woods. 

In addition, an AI + Ethics panel discussion moderated by Liberal Arts professor and division chair Zachary Savich will take place December 4 at CIA. Panelists include David Foster from Kent State University; Shannon French from Case Western Reserve University; Kevin Mowrer ’80, founder of Mowrer Meta-story; and Ashlei Watson from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. 

The panel will provide a “broad knowledge base of the social, political and ethical concerns surrounding AI that we should all be thinking about,” Woods says. It aims to highlight innovators and educators who contribute diverse and thoughtful perspectives on issues like balancing industry pressures with opportunities and navigating personal agency when it comes to using technology. 

Inspiring community 

Weaver noted that Mowrer, a CIA alum, is an example of an entertainment industry leader who, like many in College’s community, has high hopes for AI but also wants to address ethical concerns with care. He and other panelists will demonstrate how creators can identify and implement their own values-driven stances toward emerging technologies, she says. 

“I want our students and our community to see that there’s a very thoughtful and hopeful way forward,” Weaver says. “I think we need a sense of community and a sense of hope and empowerment that our actions can contribute to the future that we want. 

“A lot of times, I think we try and make sense of these things on our own and feel alone in it and feel overwhelmed,” she continues. “I think when we spend time with others in conversation, we lose that feeling of aloneness and overwhelm. That’s really an uplifting aspect.”