Motherhood and AI: Being ‘Computational Mama’

Computational Mama’s work explores coding, art and generative AI as a form of camaraderie, friendship, motherhood and self-care. She develops and facilitates beginner content and workshops for creative computation, new approaches to computational thinking and the use of generative AI tools. Her generative AI work explores the biases inherent in large data and generative AI, and she has been exploring the spaces where motherhood and AI converge.

How did you come up with name ‘Computational Mama’?

In 2017, during the last trimester of my pregnancy, I started learning how to code. It became an obvious moniker to showcase my experiments. I used to be a museum designer, I was on bed rest when I took up coding, and that’s where it started.

What is coding to you?

Coding is like poetry; it can also be a form of self-expression. It has a quality of when someone is working with wood or play. A coder is a maker at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it’s about giving that process to as many people as you can. That’s what coding with my friends was. And documenting who’s coding, where are you coding, and breaking those stereotypes.

If I learn something new, I immediately turn it into a workshop. It makes you learn it even better. I’ve had retired Moms join my workshops, who just want to learn code for their creative expression. Architects, graphic designers, artists join the workshop; it’s just a language and I’m just sharing it with others.

How do you see the two worlds of motherhood and artificial intelligence converge?

There is no clear line between where the code work ends and where the care work starts. AI is meant to mimic/have similarity to human intelligence, but can it be complete without emotional intelligence and understanding care work? My work is a practice and research effort to unearth these imperceptible spaces through my position as a primary carer and a creative technologist.

How does being a caregiver affect your practice?

Notionally there is an idea of what an artist might look like. It might appear that the artist is controlling the environment. Working with children is quite different. How can you retain focus on your practice when your job as a caregiver is to focus on someone else? It changes your entire perspective. Now I’m looking at what it would mean to have a practice rooted in care but continue to produce art from it.

Your work explores biases that are often overlooked in Artificial Intelligence. Can you tell us more about these biases?

I use prompting as a strategy to unearth bias. My work aims at using critical, diverse and feminist AI prompting methods to study large AI datasets, identify distinct diversity and gender-based gaps and biases in large language models, datasets and generative AI outputs. My work uses a distinct approach to unearth a granular and detailed look into the algorithmic biases and pitfalls of the current Generative AI models and find liminal spaces in AI datasets around the meaning of care and motherhood. 

You say your work explores coding, art and generative AI as a form of camaraderie, friendship, motherhood and self-care. How is it a source of this emotional nourishment?

Especially after childbirth, there is not a lot of time (for the parent). I started coding in my free time only for me. After a few months, my partner said this is almost your version of self-care, five minutes at a time. The practice gave me a space to express myself: low-stakes and very fast. I found this was a form of care I could share with others as well. I have also produced a series on two women coding together, which we called ‘Coding with Friends’.  Instead of capital, we explore coding as a form of friendship and care, a space where it is completely okay to fail. Sometimes failure can also give you something very interesting and different, simply by focusing on the process. It’s really about using this tool to nourish your own thought process, community, and friendship.

On your recent research trip to Switzerland, what experiences helped develop your exploration of “The Maternal Bias: Unpacking algorithmic bias through Motherhood”?

I had the chance to meet several creators across Switzerland. The conversations at the symposium in Geneva and travel to Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA USI-SUPSI), gave me a chance to open up my research to understanding the physicality of AI, and an opportunity to build research and artefacts around AI that extend into the physical world, allowing for broader thinking about AI, and care work in a more “real” context. 

Viewing the exhibition at the EPFL Pavilions, its scale was also quite exciting, and it was a quick dive into the possibilities of large-scale installations that are driven and embedded with AI.

The exposure to so many cities was very interesting. It’s one thing to operate from an Instagram handle. The research trip helped me imagine what kind of an artist I can be. Meeting techies and artists alike was very enriching. Now I see myself as an artist.

How did Motherhood and AI converge for you in Switzerland?

For one, to travel itself was a real privilege. One of the key reasons I ended up applying was the child support. Here was a space that was encouraging me to apply with my child. The mama part of the identity is so strong that to not have him on the trip would have decentered. It’s a privilege but it should be the norm. It’s not like mothers don’t have things to say, or to make. Why are funding opportunities denying us just by being silent?

Talking about motherhood and care, it gave some perspective on how things are for me. At the symposium, I could see my child’s growing intelligence has so much in parallel with conversations around AI. We have a tendency of talking about intelligence only in terms of humans. AI too can be mapped to the development of a small child, how they learn etc.

Having a child along also allowed me to see the place in a different light. It was interesting to see how the city is designed – what is for kids, what is not for kids, who’s coming to the parks, who’s bringing the children? Mostly it was grandparents. Also, it was interesting to see Switzerland doesn’t charge kids for museums etc., building it in a way that kids are encouraged. I don’t know if any of the other artists have been to the baby beach in Geneva. I have!