Building Responsible Technology: Global Digital Transformations, Tech Workers’ Agency and the Making of Artificial Intelligence

HHow could developers and deployers of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) make ‘social responsibility’ a key element in everyday industry practices and technological decisions?

To answer this question – at the core of the EU Digital Compass 2030 and the recent publication of the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI – BehindAI will open up the “algorithm black box” and deploy an innovative international action research in collaboration with tech workers from major global technology and consultancy companies in Europe, Brazil, India and the US.

Carrying out close studies of how decisions are taken during software design and development, the project will explain those decisions by understanding team members’ reflexive perspectives on tech and how those were shaped by their personal and professional trajectories. Furthermore, it will analyse concrete workplace organizational set-ups and the ways in which they allow or limit the application of those ethical and social perspectives in the everyday reality of the global tech industry.

As a MSCA Global Fellowship, BehindAI will be carried out by Sébastien Antoine under the supervision of EU tech industry expert Seán Ó Riain and organized through a closely coordinated transnational team from Europe (Maynooth/Ireland), Latin America (UFRGS/Brazil), Asia (HK PolyU/China) and North America (UPenn/USA) with strong organic links between academia and industry insiders through CoLABOR (Portugal) expertise in collaborative research.

In this way, the project will provide a new perspective on how the socialization, learning and reflexive negotiation of tech developers can address critical ethical and social issues in AI. This will provide new directions for addressing both theoretical challenges and policy dilemmas currently being considered at the highest levels, ensuring that the key principles of ethical AI championed by the EU reach the shop floor of the tech industry, shaping concrete software developments and broader digitalization processes of economy and society.