Summary
In each year, there are increased organizations investing money in the industry of artificial general intelligence. According to the Mozilla report, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is predicted to contribute 15.7 trillion dollars (about $48,000 per person in the US) to the global economy by 2030 (Internet Health Report 2022, 2022). Especially for those giant tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon spending billions to develop AI products and services. Elon Musk who is the founder of Tesla and titan of tech has donated $10 million to fund ongoing research at the non-profit research company OpenAI (The Future of AI: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the World, 2022). From all the evidence, we can see that AI is gradually being developed into transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and education, etc. However, what would happen if we did not care about ethics in the industry? Things like Google’s image labeling software classified an African American person as a “Gorilla”, Amazon disbanded an initiative that used AI to review job applicants because gender bias will keep happening. We cannot avoid all the harm that happens from AI systems, but we should make sure that we think through the situation. This is a project focusing on the area of ethics in AI. Through market research, in-depth interviews explore the current situation and barriers in the tech industry. Further ahead, designing the potential solution for driving a conversation around ethics of AI focusing on user-based wider systems in the AI team (AI engineers, designers, and AI researchers)
Next Step
The most important part of this toolkit is to not let it become a one-time discussion. Therefore, it is important to document and reflect on their framework at every stage of the project. The potential solution for continuity is to insert a toolkit into the dashboard. Everyone in the team could access the board and keep the framework in mind. In every stage, they could play around the toolkit and rearrange the values to improve the user’s experience.
Conclusion
The final prototype has been tested with 5 AI researchers, 2 designers and 1 data scientist. From the reaction and feedback, the toolkit has achieved the consequence that I expect it to be. No matter how many players are in the workshop, the procedure of the game would not be over than one and half hours. Besides, everyone seems enjoyed in the discussion and the pop-up unpredictable settings. Although, one observation that I have is that the level of engagement might be quite different depending on the background of the participants. For example, AI researchers are passionate about ethical issues. Consequently, they normally can generate a lot of interesting and meaningful conversations in the process. When I tested with designers’ group, they might not have deep knowledge of how AI machines work but they have creative imagination to create the innovative scenarios. However, for engineers, they need more motivation to think creatively because they used to only focus on using the code to solve the problems. Therefore, a facilitator will become necessary in the situation to lead the conversation and provide an assistant. Besides, the prototype is difficult to directly test with AI engineers who have the project in hand. The reason is that the non-disclosure agreement will limit the information that they can provide from the project. I hope through the connection with AI researchers, I can have the chance in the future to contact the more direct AI teams to test out the idea and iterate the toolkit. Lastly, I want to understand more on how people interpret ethical values. From there, to explore numerous ways of how to make all the ethical explanations more precise and accessible.
Reflection
What is the initial intention of doing this project?
When I worked in a healthcare company back in Taiwan, we widely used AI in our digital products just because it is a fancy new tech that every company is working on. However, the whole team seldom slows down and reflects on the idea of why we need AI in our product. Where is our data coming from? How can we make sure not to expose user’s information? These were all the questions that I can only put in mind back in time. It might be too unrealistic if we say AI will take over our world like the scenario in the science fiction film. However, we do not want to lose control of our life or be labelled by algorithms everywhere. Therefore, as a designer, I am always curious about the intersection between tech and our preferred future. The project about ethics in AI becomes a good opportunity to dip my toe into the tech industry based in the UK and to see how service designers can take the initiatives in ethics.
What I learn from the process?
Cluster and filter the insights
This is a research-based topic. At first, I was overwhelmed by all the information that I collected and struggled to narrow it down. However, it also gives me a chance to learn how to cluster and filter the insights. Hence, to find my way in the tons of paper and books, I followed the double diamond method which I used to do. Especially, I focus more on the cause and effect between all the insights, and this is where the “AHHA!” moment comes from. Consequently, I realized REFLECTION in each step is the key point to push forward the project. The reason is that it’s the part that I began to think about what I learn and how I can put the academic theory into real practice. Further ahead, my final prototype “SOCIO” is the combination of all the pieces of evidence and reflection. After the whole journey, I realized the importance of having a strong and high quality of research is the foundation of every project. Now, I can confidently prove that I am able to successfully transmit a problem solution from deep and qualitative research.
Facilitate the workshop
Facilitator plays a significant role in the workshop. In this project, my stakeholders are those AI engineers who are not so active and talkative. They might need a push to think creatively. As a result, the facilitator will need to trigger them to increase the level of engagement by using more prompt or interaction. After hosting several prototype testing sections, I have learned a lot about how to make ice breakers for players to relax and have fun, let participants familiarize themselves with each other and avoid the awkward silence. In the end, I can complete the whole workshop independently and let everyone enjoy the experience. In the future, I would like to learn more skills on how to make the event be more inclusive which can make all participants share their opinion without pressure.
The ability of storytelling
There are diverse ways of storytelling, but the main concept is to let my audiences understand what I am trying to say and where they should focus on. From my experience of explaining the prototype and making the instruction. I realized that it is not easy to convey my thoughts to people who have no idea in this industry. For example, I need to be cautious of the complicated words that I use, not throwing out all the overwhelming information, and clear guidelines for participants to follow in the toolkits. I have accomplished this by asking people to go through my instructions for the prototype. From there, I can see how people interpret my project. How can I make it easier to understand and attract their attention by exploring more.
How can Service Design be involved in this area?
After 15 months training as a service designer, I have a solid knowledge of all the methodologies and toolkits that we used to clarify the problem, analyze the touchpoint, and figure out the potential solution to keep users in the center. Applying the same concept, algorithms are all about people. For instance, Engineers are the ones training the data and feeding the machine. Users are the targets of using the product. From this point, service design tools (stakeholders map, iceberg model, ecosystem map, etc.) and methodologies (Fictional design, critical thinking and so on) can provide creative ways to support responsible research innovation and prepare for the potential situation. This project is the beginning of my journey. In the future, I would like to explore how I can bring in more concepts of service design tools into the technology industry to create a more user-centered AI system.