Artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies permeate all aspects of our lives. Their proliferation increasingly leads to encounters with ‘mutant algorithms’, ‘biased machine learning’, and ‘racist AIs’ that sometimes make familiar forms of near-future fiction pale in comparison. In these examples, AI and machine learning tools inscribe a certain future based on predictions from past observations and they foreclose a multitude of other possible futures. Faced with this potential to limit and constrain what might be, JUST AI wondered if fiction and narrative offer alternatives for how AI could and should be.

We supported fiction writing in our effort to prototype ethical futures. We introduced science-fiction authors to researchers found on our bibliometric analysis maps and commissioned short stories and essays inspired by their conversations. We presented the genesis of those early-stage encounters in a public event that provided the authors with feedback. Several months later we held public readings of the final stories which will be published with another essay and alongside excerpts from the broader public discussions. The aim of this creative project was to show how public discussion responds to, and creates, different narratives about data and AI futures