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Design a Feminist Chatbot

Gain the skills to design and prototype a chatbot that doesn't reinforce harmful gender stereotypes with this online AI course from the UAL Creative Computing Institute.

Duration

4 weeks

Weekly study

2 hours

100% online

How it works

Unlimited subscription

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Discover the importance of feminism in generative ai

We live in an age of conversations powered by artificial intelligence. From customer service chatbots to bots that help you meditate, conversational interfaces are becoming part of our everyday lives.

Yet chatbots can easily reinforce harmful gender stereotypes or promote discriminatory behaviour if their designers aren’t careful.

On this four-week course, you’ll study feminism and its relationship to technology in order to help you build a feminist chatbot.

Explore gender bias and the problem of AI bias

By applying ideas from feminism to technology development, we can help people create products and services that promote equality and positive social change, rather than making social problems like inequality or prejudice worse.

You’ll explore the problem of bias and how it can be amplified in generative AI, such as chatbots. With this knowledge, you’ll start to unpack why AI bais matters and what kind of harm this can cause.

Learn how to apply feminist design principles

To help you explore how gender relates to technology, you’ll develop your understanding of feminism.

You’ll then gain an introduction to the feminist design tool to see a feminist chatbot design process in action. This practical exercise will help you understand how to design feminist chatbot conversations.

Gain prototyping and coding skills

Finally, you’ll learn basic coding skills to design and program a chatbot of your own. You’ll be guided step-by-step to learn how to prototype in code to create your chatbot prototype.

By the end of the course, you’ll know how to use feminist design tools to ensure you can design a chatbot that doesn’t reinforce bias.

Week 1
Chatbots and the problem of bias
- Getting started
  This is your chance to meet the contributors who'll guide you through the course and hear why they believe feminist approaches to technology design are important.
- What can chatbots do?
  In this activity, you’ll see some examples of real-world chatbots, and have a chance to share your own experiences of using similar services.
- How do chatbots work?
  You’ll now look at how chatbots work, focusing on the difference between scripted chatbots and those powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
- How chatbots become biased
  In this activity, you’ll explore the concept of bias and learn how an AI chatbot service from Microsoft quickly developed extreme views.
- Why does AI bias matter?
  You’ll now examine the issue of AI bias in more detail and learn about the ways it can impact people’s lives.
- Wrapping up Week 1
  You’ve reached the end of the first week of the course! In this activity, we’ll sum up what you’ve learned, and look ahead to Week 2.
Week 2
Applying feminist design principles
- Introduction to Week 2
  This activity provides an overview of what we'll cover in the second week of the course.
- Introducing feminism
  This activity summarises key developments in the history of feminism. It also explores how our social understanding of gender shapes the technology we use.
- Developing feminist design processes
  You'll now look at how feminist principles can be applied to the design of digital products and read about the Feminist Design Tool that you'll use when designing your own chatbot.
- Understanding your stakeholders
  In this activity, you'll put the principles from the Feminist Design Tool into practice by identifying who your chatbot is aimed at and learning how to find out what this group really thinks and feels.
- Wrapping up Week 2
  Well done for reaching the end of Week 2! This activity summarises what you've learned and looks ahead to Week 3.
Week 3
Designing chatbot conversations
- Introduction to Week 3
  This activity gives a brief summary of the topics we'll cover this week and explains how you'll apply these principles to your own chatbot design.
- How can conversation design be feminist?
  In this activity, you'll explore how feminist principles can be applied to conversation design and have the chance to interact with a real-world feminist chatbot.
- Visualising stakeholders' experiences
  This activity shows how storyboarding can help you to better understand your stakeholders' needs and experiences, and gives you the opportunity to create your own storyboard.
- Choosing what your chatbot will say
  This activity asks you to consider what kind of personality your chatbot will have. You'll then produce both an offline and a digital version of your chatbot's script.
- Wrapping up Week 3
  You've now reached the end of Week 3. It's time to review what you've learned and look ahead to the final week of the course.
Week 4
Developing your prototyping skills
- Introduction to Week 4
  Congratulations on reaching this stage of the course! This activity provides an overview of what you'll cover in the final week.
- Using prototypes to test ideas
  In this activity, you'll discover two different ways to create a prototype. We'll also introduce you to the programming languages and environment that you'll use to create your own prototype.
- Creating your chatbot prototype
  In the final part of your chatbot design task, you're going to use simple coding to create and personalise a prototype of your chatbot, using the script you developed in Week 3.
- Wrapping up the course
  It's nearly the end of the course, so it's now time to reflect on what you've learned and think about how you can continue to develop your skills in the areas we've covered.