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Paper short abstract:

Diverse and possibilistic definitions of what AI and of other computational agents are bring unexpected results and uncharted relational patterns. A series of cases across art and design are explored to represent possible psychological, social, cultural, political advantages of cyberdiversity.

Paper long abstract:

When someone today mentions AI, they usually mean some form of deep neural network, trained with large quantities of data to perform a single task. Other definitions had been popular (or, at least, more frequent) in the past, and others could be in the future. In this we may see a pattern with intensive agricolture, where only the cultivars that are most favorable to business prevail and eventually replace the others. The dark side of this parallel is true as well: fragility derives from this scarcity in diversity, as diverse plants (and AIs) thrive in diverse natural (and informational) environments, also providing support to a richer ecosystem that can depend on them. As researchers, technologists, artists and designers we have performed several experiments with AIs and other forms of computational agents created for neighborhoods, rivers, plants, families, autobiographical expressions and more, where these results become evident and impactful. The article describes some of these experiments and draws some conclusions from them, under the form of directions for future research.