This blog for the AI-MAPS project by ginger coons is about an article that she co-authored: "Studying Surveillance AI-cologies: How AI is in the world and the world in AI". The blog also explains that the Living Lab Scheveningen inspired the development of the concept of the AI-cology.
A new publication is now out from AI-MAPS team members (read it here!). Gabriele Jacobs, Friso van Houdt, and ginger coons have written an article titled "Studying Surveillance AI-cologies: How AI is in the world and the world in AI" in the latest issue of the open access journal Surveillance & Society. The article lays out the concept of "surveillance AI-cologies." Surveillance AI-cologies are described as being "made up of interconnected collections of disparate actors (technological, human, more-than-human, organisational, etc.), all implicated in AI-aided surveillance tasks. They contain not only the usual complexities of any technological ecosystem but also the added complexity of AI, with emergent characteristics, both technically and socially."
We are proud that this article is based on collaboration and "critical friendship" with colleagues from the municipality of The Hague, where the Living Lab Scheveningen (LLS) inspired the development of the concept of the AI-cology (see here for a previous publication in collaboration with LLS colleagues). We advocate in the article for an inclusive and nuanced approach to quintuple helix of stakeholders (research institutions, government, private sector, civil society, and nature), and have attempted to understand how such considerations play out in the adoption of AI-aided public safety tools in a complex location like LLS.
The article also contains a number of methodological tools for exploring AI-cologies, with the recognition that dropping into a complex context and trying to understand it requires equally complex methods. We urge other researchers to ask questions not just about the technologies being implemented, but about their context, operation, materiality, ELSA traits, and quintuple helix actors. We propose a method for mapping the relations between an AI-assisted device and all of the technical, material, more-than-human, policy, and more characters it engages with.
It is our hope with this article to provide not just the kernel of a definition of the AI-cology, but also some ways of approaching and beginning to understand how AI is in the world, and the world in AI.
