What if the sociotechnical bias in AI systems today define the institutionalised hegemonies of tomorrow?

A multidisciplinary designer and artist, Yashika's practice questions the systems that frame the development of emerging technologies and imagines subversive futures.

My recent work is informed by a deep commitment to construct methodologies based on care and community engagement, to speculate alternative ways of making and experiencing AI. I explore the entanglement of human and non-human identities, and where it situates itself in the ongoing technological paradigm shift. Experimenting with new media, code, interactive installation, sound and film, I create experiential narratives rooted in feminist thought to voice the gaps and introduce inconsistencies as correction methods for biased automated systems that we exist within.

Machine Yearning, my graduate work at the Royal College of Art 2024, is an AI model slowly taught and embodied as a vessel – which recursively makes meaning from voiced experiences of yearning. The machine converses with stories, feelings, poems, and interviews imploring the everyday that informs the disruption that must shape our equitable collective futures. The conventional design of the machine learning model is broken and infiltrated with inconsistencies of voice inputs, oral histories, and intimate conversations – all gathered through workshops of shared feelings.

My work has previously been exhibited at Victoria and Albert Museum, Dutch Design Week, Corner7 London, Hyundai CMK Foundation South Korea, Royal College of Art, and previous collaborations include Meta, Korean University of Arts, and individuals from Royal College of Art and London School of Economics.