Arisa Ema
Sydney 2018: Infrastructure and co-design
AI is pervasive throughout our daily lives and its ELSI were discussed by multi-stakeholders including researchers, industries, governments, and NPO/NGOs in Japan. Discussion on AI/robotics offers valuable insight into how to engage and maintain diverse and inclusive participants from an STS research perspective. An AI public dialogue event was organized by the Japanese Society for Science and Technology Studies in September 2017 (http://ai-dialogue.strikingly.com/). Expert informants including AI/robotics researchers, social science and humanities researchers, and practitioners like a lawyer, a journalist, and a GO player gave brief introductions to begin the dialogue for roughly 60 members of the general public (including student facilitators). The organizers emphasized the importance of starting discussion from their own perspective towards AI/robotics while sharing their values. In order to conceptualize each participants’ emotion and values, they employed (1) an emotional mapping method which combines emojis and emotional comment, (2) graphic facilitation and (3) a value awareness system. There were various discussion topics: medical use, education, emotional robots, law, and dual-use. Participants realized the diverse images and definitions of AI and society. This event was also meaningful in terms of the association among AI/robotics, social science, and humanities societies that never had a connection before. This collaborative culmination is based on grassroots discussions by individual stakeholders. To grow the dialogue and create a network for future discussion, an international 2-day symposium on AI and society and a 1-day workshop toward Beneficial AI were held in October and this interdisciplinary network is continuing in Japan.