TY - JOUR
T1 - Envisioning Contestability Loops
T2 - Evaluating the Agonistic Arena as a Generative Metaphor for Public AI
AU - Alfrink, Kars
AU - Keller, Ianus
AU - Yurrita Semperena, Mireia
AU - Bulygin, Denis
AU - Kortuem, Gerd
AU - Doorn, Neelke
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Public sector organizations increasingly use artificial intelligence to augment, support, and automate decision-making. Such public AI can infringe on citizens’ right to autonomy. Contestability is a system quality that protects against this by ensuring systems are open and responsive to dispute throughout their life cycle. A growing body of work is investigating contestable AI by design. However, little of this knowledge has so far been evaluated with practitioners. To make explicit the guiding ideas underpinning contestable AI research, we construct the generative metaphor of the Agonistic Arena from the political theory of agonistic pluralism. We combine this metaphor and current contestable AI guidelines into an infographic supporting the early-stage concept design of public AI system contestability mechanisms. We evaluate this infographic in five workshops paired with focus groups with a total of 18 practitioners, yielding ten concept designs. Our findings describe mechanisms for contestability proposed by these concept designs. Building on these findings, we subsequently evaluate the efficacy of the Agonistic Arena as a generative metaphor for the design of public AI and identify two competing metaphors at play in this space: the Black Box and the Sovereign.
AB - Public sector organizations increasingly use artificial intelligence to augment, support, and automate decision-making. Such public AI can infringe on citizens’ right to autonomy. Contestability is a system quality that protects against this by ensuring systems are open and responsive to dispute throughout their life cycle. A growing body of work is investigating contestable AI by design. However, little of this knowledge has so far been evaluated with practitioners. To make explicit the guiding ideas underpinning contestable AI research, we construct the generative metaphor of the Agonistic Arena from the political theory of agonistic pluralism. We combine this metaphor and current contestable AI guidelines into an infographic supporting the early-stage concept design of public AI system contestability mechanisms. We evaluate this infographic in five workshops paired with focus groups with a total of 18 practitioners, yielding ten concept designs. Our findings describe mechanisms for contestability proposed by these concept designs. Building on these findings, we subsequently evaluate the efficacy of the Agonistic Arena as a generative metaphor for the design of public AI and identify two competing metaphors at play in this space: the Black Box and the Sovereign.
KW - Artificial Intelligence
KW - Contestability
KW - Generative Metaphor
KW - Interaction Design
KW - Public Administration
KW - Visual Explanations
M3 - Article
SN - 2405-8726
JO - She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
JF - She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
ER -