By Michaël Grauwde
We started May with a Jour Fixe where we discussed the different questions that the ELSA AI MAPS PhD candidates would address for the Extinction Rebellion protest on May 27th, 2023. The candidates Marlon, Majsa, Nanou, and Michaël will address their research questions from the different perspectives of their fields. Through a discussion among the candidates and various supervisors, the candidates presented the various questions that they would address for examining the Extinction Rebellion protest. This protest is part of the use case, crowd management is part of the three use cases that will be examined in the project focused on public safety. These are: crowd management, public nuisance, and high impact crime. Through collaboration with each other in our jour fixe, we were able to come up with different questions that help make our goals of the observation of the use case more concrete. Below, I have given a small sample of the questions that each PhD candidate is looking to explore.
For Marlon, there will be a focus on the ethical aspects of AI-systems’ use in public safety. These will include the mutual concerns of privacy, proportionality, and transparency from both a police and a protester perspective. He wants to ask questions such as, what concerns about AI do they have and how do they try to reckon with these technologies in their practices? Furthermore, Nanou as the PhD candidate focused on the legal aspects of the Extinction Rebellion protest is interested in the accountability mechanisms of AI-systems. She is also interested in the manner in which responsibilities could be divided before, during and after a protest from the different stakeholder perspectives. The societal aspects will be covered by the PhD candidate Majsa. Her research is interested in the different perspectives of surveillance, both online and offline and the manner in which the parties surveilled counter-surveil the police. Lastly, Michaël, the PhD candidate interested in the interaction between humans and AI systems and the manner in which those can be developed/designed in a responsible & trustworthy manner. He is interested in the way technologies are used on the day and which technologies are used.
We hope to address these questions at the protests through observations and through interviews with the various parties in addition to our desk research conducted prior to the protest.
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