AI & Ageism Project

This project aims to collect data on how AI portrays age. Users can tag and describe AI-generated images, contributing to a better understanding of age representation in AI.

This project is part of the "Ageism in AI" initiative, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Technologies Used

• Python
• Streamlit
• Google Drive
• Google Sheets

Repository Structure

• IMAGES/: Contains AI-generated images categorized by age depiction (neutral, older).
• TERMS/: Contains terms and consent documents.
• falling_walls.py: The main Streamlit application script for the interactive questionnaire.
• falling_walls_multilingual.py, falling_walls_polish.py: Likely variations of the main script for different languages.
• requirements.txt: Lists Python dependencies.

Running the Application

To run the application, follow these steps:

1. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Set up Google Cloud credentials: Ensure your Google Cloud service account key JSON file is available and set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to its path. For example:

   export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/path/to/your/service-account-key.json"

   Alternatively, you might need to set up the GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT environment variable if the application uses it directly.

3. Run the Streamlit application:

   streamlit run falling_walls.py

Data Collection

User responses from the interactive questionnaire are collected and stored in a Google Sheet. This data is used for research purposes to analyze how AI portrays different age groups and to understand potential biases in AI-generated content. All data is collected anonymously and handled in accordance with privacy regulations.