Satellite Projects

Public Voices in AI is a collaboration between the Digital Good Network at the University of Sheffield, the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Alan Turing Institute, Elgon Social Research and University College London.

Public Voices in AI aims to ensure that public voices are front and centre in artificial intelligence research, development and policy. A central aspect of responsible AI research, development and policy is ensuring that it takes account of public hopes, concerns and experiences. As concern about the societal impacts of AI grows and pressure for its effective regulation mounts, understanding and anticipating societal needs and values can inform responsible AI developments and deployments. Yet public voice is frequently missing from conversations about AI, an absence which inhibits progress in RAI. Addressing this gap is essential to enable AI RD&P to maximise benefits and prevent harms and to ensure that responsible AI works for everyone. Different groups benefit from and are affected by AI differently, and their hopes, concerns and experiences also vary. Because of structural inequities, some groups are more negatively impacted by AI deployments than others – for example, in welfare systems, at borders, in policing. Some groups have more resources and access to power to shape AI technologies than others. There is also a participation gap between those with the social capital to participate in shaping AI and those without.

Public Voices in AI will carry out research and produce and disseminate resources, centring those most impacted and underrepresented. One way it will do this is by distributing up to £195,000 of its funding to support participatory projects with people from groups which are negatively affected by or underrepresented in AI research, development and policy. The Public Voices in AI Fund will be launched on 31st May 2024, with a closing date for applications of 20th June 2024.

More details about the project-

https://digitalgood.net/dg-research/public-voices-in-ai/

https://digitalgood.net/public-voices-in-ai-announcement-of-funded-projects/

The project’s core research questions are: how can Responsible AI drive productivity and economic prosperity, and conversely how can productivity and economic considerations be taken into account in developing Responsible AI? We will ask: where do the benefits and costs of AI technologies accrue, especially productivity gains? What incentive structures, business models and regulatory frameworks will shape the character of the technologies, with their associated costs and benefits, so they are deployed responsibly across society and enhance the UK’s prosperity?

In this one-year project, the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, The Productivity Institute and the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), will draw on existing RAi UK work to address these questions through a combination of broad landscape mapping and focused examples. They will seek to analyse economic incentives and organisational or business models, appropriate regulatory frameworks and trade-offs, opportunities and challenges for the technology itself, and for potential mechanisms to monitor and enforce governance and incentive structures, and to understand where benefits and costs of the technologies are accruing. Their analysis can contribute to prioritizing research themes in Responsible AI, a preliminary step before further resources and work are deployed to continue addressing this key question.

More details about the project- https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/research/research-projects/responsible-trustworthy-ai/