Institute Research Lab. 

An artificial space dedicated to the study of an increasingly artificial world.

Designing the Future

Combining research with industry experience, Institute Research Lab approaches complex topics from first principles, helping others to understand the systems that generate, shape and use information.

This understanding provides a foundation for developing the skills required to navigate complexity, make informed decisions and play an active role in shaping a human centred future.

We are exploring new ways to consider and deliver educational and advisory programmes as well as developing frameworks for business to perform it's own research as a matter of course.

More Real than Real

The lab's science fiction identity recalls a time when our visions of the future were aspirational, when computers, automation and new consumer technologies promised a cleaner, easier and more exciting world. This serves as a reminder that our futures are not determined and can be shaped around human ambitions.

The lab is, in itself, a media technology experiment encapsulating ambition and risk- key components of innovation. The lab is a place to question assumptions and consider what could or should be. A place to establish facts and develop new conclusions as we investigate, study and experiment with concepts and systems.

Science fiction can be a useful in providing go-to visions of the future but these visions, often used as encouragement to adopt the latest technology, are often unexamined, unrealistic and harmful to human wellbeing.

They often fail to adequately describe our current reality and fail to provide useful steps towards our futures. It is at this point where our technological hopes and dreams meets reality, that the lab is built.

Technology and Human Agency

We are living through the start of a profound new era of technological development where our decisions regarding technology have far reaching implications across our cultures. Will we actively build a fit-for-purpose society or will we sleepwalk into a chaotic dystopian future?

We are now deploying synthetic intelligence technologies only previously explored within the frameworks of science fiction. These technologies are barely understood by their creators and are emerging within a social ecosystem not only loaded with communication potential but also measurable harms. 

The pace of change is sometimes shocking and the future can feel inevitable. But we can control our pace of change and inevitability is just a premonition within our minds.

The future belongs to us and we can shape it to our needs. If we put feelings of inevitability aside and define what we want to achieve, we can define and build it.

What are the skills required to succeed in this rapidly changing world? How do we use, deploy and capitalise on the benefits of artificial intelligence and other emergent technology without losing human agency?

This isn't business as usual. It can't be. Our relationship with technology is changing... forever.

A Key Graffio Arts initiative

Institute Research Lab is an initiative being developed by Graffio Arts to framework our commitment to future skill development for industry. The lab design philosophy echoes the experimental nature of the times we are living through and will take full advantage of emergent technology, including generative AI to deliver and promote educational material. 

Institute Research Lab is a virtual space complementing Institute, our physical space located in Loughborough UK.

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