Sean Brosnahan

Rise of the
Racist Robots

Book, 22 pages, 7.5” x 9”
Spring 2023

Under the guidance of Amy Auman and Ben Kiel.

Article

Artificial intelligence, like humans, exhibits bias. Such technology perpetuates our biases, maintaining current social inequities from historical data. Stephen Buranyi's article “Rise of the Racist Robots” shows readers how AI perpetuates biases, highlighting ways in which AI discriminates against users and echoing greater transparency within the technology industry. My goal was to create a book for Stephen Buranyi’s article that echoes the systemic nature of AI’s biases through image creation and a progressing design system. To show the underlying nature of the problem, I used each spread as a progression: each spread gets more chaotic while exposing orange, emphasizing how bias proliferates.

Image-Making
Process

I created a design system through experimentation with analog materials. I crushed paper with printed code and smeared it with ink, charcoal, and paint. I decided to use ink throughout the book because its spreading effect matched most with the book’s concept. I then ripped it, collaged it, and destroyed it, seeing what textures and compositions I could create. I photographed my experiments, bitmapped them in photoshop, and manipulated with the colors using gradient mapping.

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