ethics

Perspectives

Ethnography, Ethics & Time

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Japanese panel painting
  "Ethnographers flit forwards and backwards all the time as we create research objectives, wonder whether what we learnt yesterday is really the full story, and create and debate theories." Ethnographers are not time travelers, but we may be close. Our frameworks and methodologies develop a nuanced understanding of how relationships, processes, and objects evolve over time. This 'temporal expertise' is key to enacting our ethical responsibility to the past and future, says anthropologist Dr. Oliver Pattenden, who will explore these themes in his upcoming EPIC Talk on April 25, 2023: From Complex Histories to Possible Futures: Ethical Practice Across Time. In this Q&A, he discusses the intersection of ethnography, ethics, and time; how to encourage organizations to focus on ethics as a core component of decision-making, and what he's learned from his three-year-old son lately. We hope you enjoy this rich conversation! When people think about ethics, time probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. What inspired...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Creating a Responsible AI Practice

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Learn models and principles to ensure organizations are creating, using, and deploying AI that coworkers, customers, and society can trust. Instructors: KATHY BAXTER, Principal Architect of Ethical AI Practice, Salesforce) & YOAV SCHLESINGER, Architect of Ethical AI Practice, Salesforce [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This video has been edited to protect the privacy of participants in the live tutorial. Our lives are directed, enriched, influenced, and sometimes harmed by AI, in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Although many AI regulations have been implemented in the last few years and more regulation is coming, organizations cannot wait until they are compelled by external forces to develop responsible AI practices. For the sake of your business,...

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Tutorial: Power Tools for Equity in Research & Design

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Tutorial: Power Tools for Equity in Research & Design
This tutorial gives you and your teams robust, actionable tools for navigating inequity and shifting power hierarchies, from project planning to implementation. Instructors: CHELSEA MAULDIN, Executive Director, Public Policy Lab & NATALIA RADYWYL, Head of Research & Capability, Today Design [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This video has been edited to protect the privacy of participants in the live tutorial. To do ethical, equitable work in any domain, we need robust tools for assessing and addressing power. Whether we’re creating products, services, or policies, inequities can create direct and indirect risks for research participants and underserved populations. This tutorial gives you robust, actionable tools for navigating inequity through...

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Designing and Conducting Inclusive Research: How a Global Technology Company and an Online Research Platform Partnered to Explore the Technology Experiences of Users who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

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Presentation slide projected on stage: title, "Benefits of Remote Technology". text: "My phone I use for basically everything. I use it to have..." On the right is a photo of what appears to be a desk with a computer monitor (unclear)
DANA C. GIERDOWSKI Lenovo KAREN EISENHAUER dscout PEGGY HE Lenovo [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This case study examines how researchers at Lenovo and dscout partnered to conduct a mobile ethnographic study on the technology experiences of individuals who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing, with the goal of making their products and research practices more accessible and inclusive. The study revealed common frustrations and pain points people experience when using their every-day technology. The researchers also learned valuable research design and operations lessons related to recruiting participants who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing, providing accommodations, and establishing an accessible research environment. This case explores the benefits of mobile-forward research design, and the additional considerations and adaptations necessary for collecting both asynchronous and synchronous data from individuals who have hearing loss and who have different...

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Cultivating Resiliencies for All: The Necessity of Trauma Responsive Research Practices

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Presentation slide: an arial view of a meandering river. Overlain text: "A Trauma Responsive Development Model. 1. Aware. 2. Sensitive. 3. Informed. 4. Responsive"
MATTHEW BERNIUS Code for America RACHAEL DIETKUS Social Workers Who Design DOWNLOAD PDF[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This paper is an exploration of trauma, how and why it can surface during ethnographic and qualitative research, and the importance of anticipating its potential presence. We present a model to help plan for and mitigate the risks of trauma and demonstrate how it fits into broader methodological discussions of conducting safer and more ethical, responsible, and humane research. We close by discussing one pathway for a journey from being sensitive and aware of trauma to actively responding to it at both the individual and organizational levels across your work. Keywords: Trauma informed care, trauma responsive research and design, design research, ethics, qualitative methods Article citation: 2022 EPIC Proceedings pp 9–34, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To access the video presentation: JOIN EPIC or...

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Exiting the Road to Hell: How We Reclaim Agency & Responsibility in Our Fights for Justice

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Exiting the Road to Hell
Keynote Speaker: PANTHEA LEE, Reboot [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Panthea Lee is a strategist, organizer, designer, and facilitator, and the Executive Director of Reboot. She is passionate about building transformative coalitions between communities, activists, movements, and institutions to tackle structural inequity—and working with artists to realize courageous social change. Panthea is a pioneer in designing and guiding multi-stakeholder processes to address complex social challenges, with experience doing so in 30+ countries with partners including UNDP, MacArthur Foundation, Luminate, CIVICUS, Wikimedia, Women’s Refugee Commission, and governments and civil society groups at the national, state, and local...

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Immersive Ethics: Anticipating Risks and Harms in Virtual and Augmented Reality

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Immersive ethics
Moderator: JILLIAN POWERS, Cognizant Panelists: JORDAN KRAEMER, Anti-Defamation League; ARWA MICHELLE MBOYA, Magic Leap; JESSICA OUTLAW, The Extended Mind LLC [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] As new technologies, from AI to immersive experiences, are developed at scale, they raise ethical concerns for research and design. Data-driven systems have repeatedly been shown to entrench social biases along lines of race, gender, and class, from racist algorithms in the criminal justice system to misgendering trans and nonbinary people. Immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), however, raise separate and thorny questions for ethical design. Immersive technologies create novel experiences of embodiment...

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Creating Future Imaginaries through Indigenous AI

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Creating Future Imaginaries through Indigenous AI
Keynote Speaker: JASON LEWIS, Concordia University [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Jason Edward Lewis' multidisciplinary research and creative practice has been central to developing Indigenous media art in North America and worldwide, establishing a vital conversation about the interaction between Indigenous culture and computational technology. His contributions comprise scholarly writing, art making and technology research, as well as his leadership of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures and his creation of the Indigenous Futures Research Centre. A digital media theorist, poet, and software designer, Lewis is currently University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary and Professor...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Power Tools for Equity in Research & Design

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Power Tools for Equity in Research & Design
Instructors: CHELSEA MAULDIN (Executive Director, Public Policy Lab) & NATALIA RADYWYL (Research Director, Public Policy Lab) This tutorial gives you robust, actionable tools for navigating inequity through a project life cycle. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This tutorial was conducted at EPIC2021. Exercises and discussions have been omitted to protect the privacy of participants. To do ethical, equitable work in any domain, we need robust tools for assessing and addressing power. Whether we’re creating products, services, or policies, inequities can create direct and indirect risks for research participants and underserved populations. This tutorial gives you robust, actionable tools for navigating inequity through a project life cycle. Public...

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Tutorial: Data and Ethnography for Better AI Product Development

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OVETTA SAMPSON Microsoft [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview Ovetta Sampson covers when, how, and where to integrate ethnography and data science in the exploratory research process to have better and more ethical AI product development outcomes. With a combination of lecture, case study examples, and exercises, attendees gained a clear understanding of why making data a stakeholder in user research will create a more ethical and human-centered AI product. This tutorial is created especially for researchers who understand the need to mix ethnography and data science but just don’t know quite how to do it. Topics include: Bringing data into research planning to help identify and reduce bias Bringing data science into synthesis to help illuminate system...

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Scaling Dignity: An Antidote to Poverty?

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LORENN RUSTER 3A Institute, Australian National University [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] PechaKucha Presentation—A wise woman once shared with me that the opposite of poverty isn't wealth. It's dignity. In a world where scale is about optimising for something bigger, faster, easier, broader and more profitable, we risk decision-making that is at odds with preserving, enabling and enhancing human dignity. What if we changed our focus to instead work out how we scale human dignity? This PechaKucha draws on my career across consulting, social enterprise and academia in geographies from Sydney CBD to rural Uganda and highlights three moments where I experienced dignity that I believe can scale. Through the telling of stories it shows glimmers of how we can...

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There’s No Playbook for Praxis: Translating Scholarship into Action to Build a More Ethical Bank

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JEFFREY GREGER Varo [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] The US banking industry has a long history of excluding, exploiting, or simply ignoring low-income communities, recent immigrants, and racial minorities. In this paper, I share my experiences creating a community of practice where employees of a rapidly-growing banking startup can identify and confront the ethical challenges facing the financial technology (fintech) industry. This community is informed by insights from four years of activism and anthropological research that I conducted with small teams of service designers and ethnographers developing financial services for and with low- to moderate-income communities around the world. Through this research, I identified three institutional logics—insularity, decontextualization, and technological hubris—which limit efforts to build a more inclusive, equitable banking system. These logics hold the potential to lead well-intentioned organizations, and...

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Where Can We Find an Ethics for Scale?: How to Define an Ethical Infrastructure for the Development of Future Technologies at Global Scale

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IAN DULL ReD Associates FANI NTAVELOU BAUM ReD Associates THOMAS HUGHES ReD Associates [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] Despite companies facing real consequences for getting ethics wrong, basic ethical questions in emerging technologies remain unresolved. Companies have begun trying to answer these tough questions, but their techniques are often hindered by the classical approach of moral philosophy and ethics – namely normative philosophy – which prescribe an approach to resolving ethical dilemmas from the outset, based on assumed moral truths. In contrast, we propose that a key foundation for ‘getting ethics right’ is to do the opposite: to discover them, by going out into the world to study how relevant people resolve similar ethical dilemmas in their daily lives – a project we term ‘grounded ethics’. Building from Durkheim's theory of moral facts and more recent developments in the anthropology of morals and ethics, this paper explores...

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Tutorial: Ethics in Data-Driven Industries

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EMANUEL MOSS CUNY/Data & Society FRIEDERIKE SCHÜÜR Cityblock Health [s2If is_user_logged_in()][/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] Resources Case Studies, Recommendations, & Solutions (PDF) IBM Fairness 360 Datasheets for Data Sets Model Cards for Model Reporting Consequence Scanning Owning Ethics [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview Technology companies have discovered ethics in the wake of public pressure to consider the consequences of their products. This has been prompted by the finding that machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) systems, as fundamentally pattern-seeking technologies, can and do exacerbate long-term structural inequalities. Companies and employees also struggle with the challenges posed by the dual-use nature of technology. This...

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Calibrating Agency: Human-Autonomy Teaming and the Future of Work amid Highly Automated Systems

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LEE CESAFSKY Alliance Innovation Lab – Silicon Valley ERIK STAYTON Alliance Innovation Lab – Silicon Valley, MIT MELISSA CEFKIN Alliance Innovation Lab – Silicon Valley [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF[/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This paper explores how the design of everyday interactions with artificial intelligence in work systems relates to broader issues of interest to social scientists and ethicists: namely human well-being and social inequality. The paper uses experience designing human interactions with highly automated systems as a lens for looking at the social implications of work design, and argues that what human and automation each do is less important than how human and automation are structured to interact. The Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) paradigm, explored in the paper, has been a promising alternative way to think about human interactions with automation in our laboratory's research and development work. We argue that the notion of teaming is particularly useful...