Faced with the dizzying rise of generative artificial intelligence, which is disrupting our working methods, it may seem difficult to explore machine learning without resorting to expensive, energy-intensive commercial models that siphon off cultural content. But what if it were possible to think about this technology differently?

This training course aims to demystify artificial intelligence for beginners by exploring the fundamentals of machine learning, the technology at the heart of the concept of artificial intelligence. The course will offer theoretical sessions including examples of applications in the arts and fun mini-workshops to simplify topics that can quickly become complex. These are designed to be easy to understand, deploy and manipulate for alternative uses. No programming knowledge is required to take the course.

Demonstrations of text, image, and sound generation will be covered using ethical models trained on open data. Ethical, cultural, and environmental issues will be addressed at the end of the training. 

Approach

This training will not cover commercial AI tools developed by technology corporations, but rather seeks to raise awareness among the artistic community about the underlying technology in the spirit of ethical technological reappropriation.

Required equipment

Participants should (ideally) bring a laptop for the duration of the training course.

Post-training mentoring

Following the workshop, each participant will be entitled to one hour of mentoring to apply what they have learned to a personal project.

Detailed Program

Saturday, 21 February

The first day is devoted to the fundamental concepts of machine learning and its use in an interactive context. An artist presentation will take place at the end of the day.

Morning

Introduction : What is AI? Group discussion in the form of questions and answers to demystify AI.

Brief history: Lovelace and algorithms, the early days of AI, perceptrons, AI winters, ELIZA, DeepBlue, the rise of GPUs, Google Deepmind, ChatGPT, etc.

Workshop : Demonstration of how an algorithm works with Tensorflow (web).

Theoretical foundations: The fundamental types of tasks, natural language processing (NLP), generation methods, types of learning, the importance of input and output data.

Simple workshop: Image classification, pose detection with Teachable Machines.

Afternoon

Training a model: Data collection, standardisation, iteration, limitations and constraints.

Advanced workshop – pair work: Training a model with Edge Impulse. 

Interactive machine learning (IML): Mapping d’interaction. 

Workshop : Demonstration with Wekinator, Touch Designer, and camera detection.

End of day

The guest artist Jean Dubois will share with us the development of his recent research-creation project:  Ces visages qui n’appartiennent à personne : imaginer une Humanité non vivante à l’aide de l’intelligence artificielle générative.

Sunday, 22 February

The second day is devoted to exploring generative AI and ethical models.

Morning

Text generation: Language processing, LLM, GPT, and omnimodal model.

Workshop : Generative poetry demo with Ollama and the Comma model.

Audio generation: Speech synthesis, Stable Audio Open.

Workshop : Voice synthesis demo with the previous exercise + MAX/MSP.

Afternoon

The visual generation: GAN, diffusion models, real time.

Workshop : Demo of several GANs with ComfyUI and TouchDesigner integration.

Ethical principles: Prejudice, energy consumption, decision-making power, copyright, privacy, disinformation and misinformation, etc.