My tenure sabbatical runs through May, so I’ve been putting my head down working on a book about the ethics and practice of people using emerging technologies. Amid that, I popped my head up to give a talk to Dr. Yeqing Kong’s “Responsible AI in Communication” class at Georgia Tech.
My talk was called “Waterbot as an Example of Public Sector AI: Cognitive Dissonance, Open Hands, and Juggling.” I talked about externalities, stakeholders, accountability, and the cognitive dissonance that comes of doing public sector AI work for a public that may not all be excited about AI.
Holding cognitive dissonance is an important part of working for the public. A creator’s vision for the project, the public’s vision for the project, and the funder’s vision for the project are all necessary but often conflict; doing public sector AI work means that instead of making some sort of hierarchy between these, they all have to be attended to simultaneously. (See juggling, below.) Holding all of these in concert requires living with some cognitive dissonance. Yet there are ways forward: being respondent to the public’s concerns means taking all of the concerns seriously and working iteratively with stakeholders who are concerned to address issues; even if not all issues can be fully resolved quickly (or, in some cases, ever), the ongoing relationship with stakeholders can become one that works toward solutions that work for all the parties involved. Working in good faith toward goals that may not be reached (due to technical, social, or competing stakeholder concerns) is not easy, but it is a responsibility that those working in Public Sector AI have.
Working with open hands means being respondent to rapid changes that may even spell the end of the project, if the public is not being served by the tool; juggling is about keeping all of the stakeholder concerns, feature requests, funding amount, and ethical concerns all in the air at the same time. You can’t focus on everything all at once (as in juggling), but you can keep all the balls in the air (even if some are falling and need to be tossed back up again). Each of these three ethical positions are critical to working in public sector AI.
I was honored to be asked to speak; thank you again to Dr. Yeqing Kong for the opportunity!