The 2021 Response-ability Summit took place online over two-days, May 20-21. Speakers were responding to the theme, How do we respond to the problems in tech using our abilities? View the programme. Our 2021 theme art, Intersection, was created by creative technologist and artist, Kerry Harrison, using a combination of machine learning and traditional art-making techniques.
(All the talk recordings are available to Response-ability Summit ticket-holders and guests only, for three months, after which time they become publicly available. Without the support of our ticket-holders and sponsors, the Summit, quite simply, could not continue.)
Keynote: Doing the Future Differently: AI and the Promise of a New ‘Response-ability’
Susan Halford, Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute, gave the academic keynote at the 2021 Response-ability Summit in May. In her talk, Susan explores how we can do futures differently and what part we can play in futures-making despite the “really bold claims made about how new technologies will shape our world”.
Watch Susan’s talk, Doing the Future Differently: Artificial Intelligence and the Promise of a New ‘Response-ability’, and read our brief summary here. We’ve included a list of the books mentioned in Susan’s talk.
Keynote: Working at the Intersections. Or: Busting out of Boxes
Rakhi Rajani, Chief Digital Officer, Genomics England, gave the industry keynote at the 2021 Response-ability Summit in May. In her talk, Rakhi explores the myriad ways in which we can approach challenges differently in order to arrive at better solutions, which involves working at the intersections.
Watch Rakhi’s talk, Working at the intersections, or busting out of boxes, and read our brief summary here.
Trusting, auditing, and explaining algorithms
Dr Gemma Galdon-Clavell and Emma Lopez share their experience gained from a bottom-up approach to algorithmic auditing, combining both social science and computer science; Agnethe Grøn explains how a Service Design approach helped a team develop the explanations that different stakeholders need to trust an AI screening tool; and Lara Macdonald shares the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) findings on addressing bias and discrimination in an algorithmic age. Chair: Dr David Barnard-Wills.
Humanising technology
Lorenn Ruster and Thea Snow share findings from a project on how to reimagine the role and responsibility of governments to proactively enable and support people to live their best lives using technology; Dr Jennifer Cearns explores how we might design empathy into digital mental healthcare; and Dr Emily Corrigan-Kavanagh shares a participatory approach to designing sound sensing technology to improve people’s urban lives. Chair: Corina Enache.
Assemblages: algorithms, data privacy, and design
Antti Rannisto shares insights from Solita’s work on the Finnish Covid-19 tracing app and how human agency is entwined with algorithmic technologies; Gitika Saksena questions the universality of narratives on data privacy in the context of a contact-tracing app in India and provokes us to think about the assemblages that inform the negotiation with contact-tracing apps; and Sophie Adams-Foster asks us to consider the assemblages, networks, and design decisions that drive product design and innovation. Chair: Dr Melanie Tan Uy.
AI and the Ethical Quandaries of Care Infrastructures in Africa
Dr Azza Mustafa Babikir Ahmed, Amina Alaoui Soulimani, and Min’enhle Ncube draw on perspectives from East Africa (Rwanda), North Africa (Morocco) and Southern Africa (Zambia) to discuss digitised healthcare and the ethical quandaries of digital life, being and institutionalised care, as the continent understandably rushes to embrace new technologies in its project to decolonise progress and suffering. Chair: Dr Ralph Borland.
Doing Ethics
Dr Luke Moffat and Dr Malé Luján Escalante explore a collaborative and creative method, Ethics through Design (EtD), that approaches ethics less as a tick-box exercise and more as a continuous and constitutive part of innovation; Sophie Taylor uses a case study to show how a local authority built trust among its residents around citizen data; and Maria Bell shares how researchers can advocate for and implement ethical review processes in the algorithmic product life cycle. Chair: Lisa Talia Moretti.
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Designing for marginalised and forgotten communities
Eriol Fox asks us to think about how we explicitly include places and communities still ‘coming online’; Dr Mariliis Öeren explores the challenges involved in designing digital solutions to improve mental health for people from lower socio-economic groups; and Anna Leggett shares a research project that explored opportunities to connect with marginalised communities during the pandemic. Chair: Damini Satija.
Fintech, auditing, and blockchain
Professor Sharon Collard uses the Nationwide Building Society’s Open Banking for Good programme to illustrate how to solve for real fintech problems with a team of user experts, solution experts and process experts; Dr Johannes Lenhard shows how ESG auditing of Venture Capitalists seems to be leading to shift in self-reproducing power structures; and Priyanka Dass Saharia explores the benefits and challenges to adopting distributed technologies (blockchain) in the context of the Aadhaar project in India. Chair: Dr Erin B. Taylor.
Data: Privacy and Responsibility
Taru Rastas explores how corporations can design responsible and innovative data practices, using insights from a project with 7 organisations; Gilbert Hill shares his insights, as a CEO of a start-up designed to give people control over their data, how an ethical, humane approach can move us all beyond compliance towards data dialogue; and Daniel Stanley explores how we might increase public understanding of the importance of data and its protection. Chair: Laura Musgrave.
Anthropologists in tech and advertising
Lianne Potter explains why cybersecurity teams need to hire beyond technical expertise and look towards the social sciences for the next advancements in cyber fortification; Stephen Paff and Astrid Countee examine strategies for leveraging data science and anthropology in the tech sector to help address pressing complex societal issues; Tiffany Tivasuradej, an anthropologist working in advertising in Hong Kong, simplifies the fundamentals of designing purpose-driven brands that stay human and responsible to survive in today’s socio-digital world. Chair: Dr Gigi Taylor.
Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) Presents
Martha King, Clara Collett, and Fiona Dowling from Knowle West Media Centre, a digital arts organisation that runs Bristol’s Living Lab (as a part of ENoLL), presented a range of projects to show how an arts and co-design approach can help create responsible tech.
Projects showcased include Forms of Intelligence, which explores how animal and plant intelligence can inspire the co-design of new tech made to benefit all living things, not just humans; and Maker City which places young people at the centre of co-creating tech for social and environmental justice. Plus examples from ReThink, ReMake, ReCycle, which responds to the issue of household waste on both a local and global scale, and We Can Make, an award-winning citizen-led housing initiative.
National biometric identity systems: The case of Aadhaar
Aadhaar, India’s government-mandated national identity system, has been variously described as a model implementation of a biometric ID system and a restrictive, rights- and privacy-abusing attempt by the government to spy on and control its citizens. Since 2016 over 1 billion people have been registered and, despite its successes, concerns remain.
The panel explored the background and history of Aadhaar, and discussed the pros and cons of national biometric identity systems.
Hosted by Yoti, with Ken Banks, Subhashish Panigrahi, Priyanka Dass Saharia, and Bidisha Chaudhuri.