Ethical Design Fiction

Jensen, Thessa; Vistisen, Peter

doi:10.29297/orbit.v1i2.56

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is an approach that designs objects or technologies within a fictional world or narrative in order to explore not the technology itself, but the impact and influence of technology on people's lives, social institutions, and norms. Work in this field is varied, including not only physical design (Bleecker 2009) but also narrative forms (Jensen and Vistisen 2017;Markussen and Knutz 2013). As such, we created a fictional narrative world where emotional AI is situated in everyday circumstances.…”

Section: Deploying An Interactive Narrative Methods Using Design Fict...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-First, Please: Assessing Citizen Views and Industrial Ambition for Emotional AI in Recommender Systems

Bakir

Laffer

McStay

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper qualitatively explores the views of diverse members of the British public on applications of biometric emotional AI technologies patented by two globally dominant consumer-facing recommender systems, Amazon and Spotify. Examining Amazon and Spotify patents for biometric profiling of users’ emotions, disposition, and behaviour to offer them tailored services, ads, and products from their wider platforms, this paper points to industrial ambition regarding emotional AI. Little is known about ordinary people’s views on deployment of such technology, and given the complex, abstract, and future-facing nature of such technologies, ascertaining informed lay views is hard. We address this through our innovative, qualitative study of diverse British-based adults (n=46) that presents to them near-horizon use cases in an interactive fictional narrative that deploys design fiction principles and ContraVision techniques. We find the themes of “usefulness,” “resignation,” “uneasy terms of engagement,” and “human-first,” adding rich and nuanced insights to prior survey work on users’ views towards biometric-based emotional AI technologies. In contributing to a richer understanding of whether emotional AI technologies should be deployed in consumer-facing recommender systems, and if so, on what terms, we find that well-established policy-friendly criticisms apply to global emotional AI recommender systems. We conclude, however, that problems of alienation and need for a human-first approach to emerging AI technology are the most significant criticisms.

show abstract

Section: Deploying An Interactive Narrative Methods Using Design Fict...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-First, Please: Assessing Citizen Views and Industrial Ambition for Emotional AI in Recommender Systems

Bakir

Laffer

McStay

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To help gage attitudes toward complex, abstract, future-facing emotion profiling technologies, our focus groups drew from design fiction principles ( Bleecker, 2009 ; Jensen and Vistisen, 2017 ) to create a fictional interactive narrative world for our participants, where emotion profiling is situated in everyday circumstances. Participants in each focus group are talked through the interactive narrative by a moderator, where they are presented with a series of different settings involving emotion profiling based on current and likely near-future lived contexts.…”

Section: Stage 1: Focus Groups Using Design Fiction and Contravisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On manipulation by emotional AI: UK adults’ views and governance implications

Bakir,

Laffer,

McStay

et al. 2024

Front. Sociol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With growing commercial, regulatory and scholarly interest in use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to profile and interact with human emotion (“emotional AI”), attention is turning to its capacity for manipulating people, relating to factors impacting on a person’s decisions and behavior. Given prior social disquiet about AI and profiling technologies, surprisingly little is known on people’s views on the benefits and harms of emotional AI technologies, especially their capacity for manipulation. This matters because regulators of AI (such as in the European Union and the UK) wish to stimulate AI innovation, minimize harms and build public trust in these systems, but to do so they should understand the public’s expectations. Addressing this, we ascertain UK adults’ perspectives on the potential of emotional AI technologies for manipulating people through a two-stage study. Stage One (the qualitative phase) uses design fiction principles to generate adequate understanding and informed discussion in 10 focus groups with diverse participants (n = 46) on how emotional AI technologies may be used in a range of mundane, everyday settings. The focus groups primarily flagged concerns about manipulation in two settings: emotion profiling in social media (involving deepfakes, false information and conspiracy theories), and emotion profiling in child oriented “emotoys” (where the toy responds to the child’s facial and verbal expressions). In both these settings, participants express concerns that emotion profiling covertly exploits users’ cognitive or affective weaknesses and vulnerabilities; additionally, in the social media setting, participants express concerns that emotion profiling damages people’s capacity for rational thought and action. To explore these insights at a larger scale, Stage Two (the quantitative phase), conducts a UK-wide, demographically representative national survey (n = 2,068) on attitudes toward emotional AI. Taking care to avoid leading and dystopian framings of emotional AI, we find that large majorities express concern about the potential for being manipulated through social media and emotoys. In addition to signaling need for civic protections and practical means of ensuring trust in emerging technologies, the research also leads us to provide a policy-friendly subdivision of what is meant by manipulation through emotional AI and related technologies.

show abstract

“…I could try making the case that DF was not storytelling before, but NOW it is. I am trying to make the rule [37], section 3.7.3 that DF was not for design in the present [28] until recently [22], but NOW it can be.…”

Section: A I'd Like To Have An Argument Pleasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…I left that objection dangling in section 6.1. I could point to Jensen and Vistisen [22], who argue for DF that turns to action in the present as a way of incorporating ethics in the design process. Reviewer 2 says it's not, and I may be looking into the abyss of yet another philosophical difference.…”

Section: The Ugly Duckling Is Still Waitingmentioning

confidence: 99%