Humans of AI (& vulnerable line graphs)

Responding to community needs in my department, I designed a series of events in which senior researchers share vulnerable line graphs plotting their happiness (on the y-axis) over the course of their research careers (on the x-axis), explaining their highs and lows. The events open up questions and conversations about mental health, good and bad relationships, and the intimate and emotional experience of research.

Inclusion in AI / Womxn in AI / Queer in AI

Inclusion in AI is a student-run group working to support minority races, genders, sexual orientations, and academic backgrounds in my department. In 2018-2019, I co-led the first year of IIAI, introducing weekly Womxn in AI events, monthly Queer in AI events, and welcoming department-wide gatherings with diverse speakers, while advocating for transparency and pro‑student policies.

In 2019, I co-created the Radical AI Network. Radical AI began with a shared understanding that we live in a society that distributes power unevenly. Growing from these roots, this community was formed to examine how AI rearranges power and work with radical hope that our communities can dream up and build different AI/human systems that put power back in the hands of the people.

The Radical AI virtual space was formed for radical people to support each other, connect, read and create radical AI projects.

Our Relationship with AI:
Exploring the Present & Dreaming Up Radical Futures
workshop @ The FAT*-CtrlZ.AI Zine Fair

In this workshop, we deepened our understanding of our emotional relationships with AI, while also grappling with our most vulnerable concerns and hopes for the evolution of these relationships: we asked how do we dream up radical AI futures that are safer, more equitable, and more beautiful?

In the lead up to the workshop, we explored our daily relationships with AI through creating handmade data visualizations. At the workshop, we went on to engage in a speculative sci-fi activity, writing into existence the seeds of more beautiful future relationships with AI. Finally, we collectively turned the motifs of our imagined futures into a large visualization using paper, paint, and ribbon, and we discussed what lies between our present and the futures we dream of.

These communities have also been very important to me:

• Bay Area Solidarity Summer
  a political action camp to cultivate young South Asian American activists


• Queer Arts Initiative
  a weekly queer poetry workshop


• Yoni Ki Baat
  a community and live performance by South Asian womxn