Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Industry guidelines and regulatory attempts do little to provide accessible and equitable means for contesting adverse effects of AI technologies. This contribution uses technological mediation and design theory to probe how the co-constituted roles of contestant and contested may be attended to.

Long abstract:

Contestation, in general, is an after-the-fact affair. Ideally, in transparent, or at least slowly progressing, processes of bureaucracy or legality there are steps, reference points, on which to build contestation—and often, appropriate or at least dedicated channels. However, the intricacies of an AI system are a different setup; and existing self-assigned industry guidelines or lagging regulatory attempts suggest that contestability is far from settled or achieved. From interface to off-shore silicate, the probabilistic models, sprawling software dependencies, multi-lingual architectures, and inscrutable databases create a haze of technological mediation. How can this be conceptually and practically attended to? Of course, the challenges of developing socio-technical systems which include AI technology components are well-known; and participatory, critical and decolonial design methods to address, challenge or even mitigate harm for people and planet are well established. But at runtime, and with the spectre of adaptive AI models shifting the parameters and feedback loops of systems significantly, where can a foothold be gained? In this paper, I suggest thinking contestation as a matter of technologically mediated co-constitution, in other words, a process in which who contests and what it contested are brought forth. This shows that, on the one hand, seemingly trivial other types of contestation are never not mediated; and on the other hand indicates what in particular sets contestation regarding AI systems apart: It is in layers of co-constitution, not exchanges between parties, that access points for contestation are made or disappeared.