{"id":"c31906d3-4cd5-5b05-aebe-5ce1538c70b8","kind":"official","name":"Hegemony Eroding: Excavating Diversity in Latent Space","slug":"hegemony-eroding-excavating-diversity-in-latent-space","url":"https://api.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/event/c31906d3-4cd5-5b05-aebe-5ce1538c70b8/?format=json","track":"art-beauty","assembly":"ccc","room":"85a6ba5d-11d9-4efe-8d28-c5f7165a19ce","location":null,"language":"en","description":"Generative AI models ingest huge datasets gathered all over the web. Unsurprisingly, they reflect decades of Western cultural hegemony. Yet, the hegemony is not absolute.\r\n\r\nNon-Western motifs, that is, recurring patterns and themes with deep cultural resonance, can be discovered and reproduced across different generative AI models.\r\n\r\nIn this talk I will explain the methods I developed to draw out motifs, the journey I took and what I learned along the way. I will present motifs and use them to outline a space stretching from representation to prejudice on the one hand and western to non-western depiction on the other.\r\n\r\nFinally, I will make a case for AI as a tool for cultural exploration and discuss how monetary incentives jeopardise this endeavour, adding to the long list of reasons to break up monopolies with transparent, publicly-funded AI-models.","schedule_start":"2025-12-29T21:05:00+01:00","schedule_duration":"00:40:00","schedule_end":"2025-12-29T21:45:00+01:00"}