PhD update – September 2023

I’m back again with anoth­er Ph.D. update. Five years after I start­ed in Delft, we are near­ing the fin­ish line on this whole thing. But before we look ahead, let’s review notable events since the pre­vi­ous update in March 2023.

Occurrences

  1. I pre­sent­ed our frame­work, Con­testable AI by Design, at the annu­al NWO ICT Open con­fer­ence, which, for the first time, had an entire track ded­i­cat­ed to HCI research in the Nether­lands. It was an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet fel­low researchers from oth­er Dutch insti­tu­tions. The slides are avail­able as PDF at contestable.ai.
  2. I vis­it­ed Ham­burg to present our paper, Con­testable Cam­era Cars, at CHI 2023. We also received a Best Paper award, which I am, of course, very pleased with. The con­fer­ence was equal parts inspir­ing and over­whelm­ing. The best part of it was meet­ing in-per­son researchers who shared my interests.
  3. Also, at CHI, I was inter­viewed about my research by Mike Green for his pod­cast Under­stand­ing Users. You can lis­ten to it here. It is always good prac­tice to try and lay out some of my argu­ments spon­ta­neous­ly live.
  4. In June, I joined a pan­el at a BOLD Cities “talk show” to dis­cuss the design of smart city sys­tems for con­testa­bil­i­ty. It was quite an hon­or to be on the same pan­el as Eef­je Cup­pen, direc­tor of the Rathenau Insti­tute. This event was great because we had tech­no­log­i­cal, design, polit­i­cal, and pol­i­cy per­spec­tives. Sev­er­al guests argued for the need to rein­vig­o­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy and give a more promi­nent role to elect­ed politi­cians in set­ting tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy. A report is avail­able here.
  5. In August, the BRIDE project had its clos­ing event. This is the NWO research project that par­tial­ly fund­ed my Ph.D. The event was an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on our work togeth­er over the past years. I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it the work of Sask­ia Sassen on city­ness and to think through some of the impli­ca­tions of my work on con­testa­bil­i­ty for the field of smart urban­ism. The slides are avail­able at contestable.ai.
  6. Final­ly, last week, a short opin­ion piece that lays out the argu­ment for con­testable AI in what I hope is a rea­son­ably acces­si­ble man­ner, was pub­lished on the TU Delft website.
Photo of Eefje Cuppen and I being interviewed by Inge Janse at the BOLD Cities talk show on June 22, 2023—photo by Tiffany Konings.

Eef­je Cup­pen and I being inter­viewed by Inge Janse at the BOLD Cities talk show on June 22, 2023—photo by Tiffany Konings.

Envisioning Contestability Loops

Through­out this, I have been dili­gent­ly chip­ping away at my final pub­li­ca­tion, “Envi­sion­ing Con­testa­bil­i­ty Loops: Eval­u­at­ing the Ago­nis­tic Are­na as a Gen­er­a­tive Metaphor for Pub­lic AI.” I had a great time col­lab­o­rat­ing with Leon de Korte on an info­graph­ic of part of my design framework.

We took this info­graph­ic on a tour of Dutch inter­ac­tion design agen­cies and con­duct­ed con­cept design work­shops. I enjoyed return­ing to prac­tice and shar­ing the work of the past cou­ple of years with peers in prac­tice. My friends at Eend wrote a nice blog post about it.

The analy­sis of the out­comes of these work­shops forms the basis for the arti­cle, in which I explore the degree to which the guid­ing con­cept (gen­er­a­tive metaphor) behind con­testable AI, which I have dubbed the “Ago­nis­tic Are­na” is a pro­duc­tive one for design prac­ti­tion­ers. Spoil­ers: It is, but com­pet­ing metaphors are also at play in the pub­lic AI design space.

The man­u­script is close to com­ple­tion. As usu­al, putting some­thing like this togeth­er is a heavy but grat­i­fy­ing lift. I look for­ward to shar­ing the results and the under­ly­ing info­graph­ic with the broad­er world.

Are we there yet?

Look­ing ahead, I will be on a pan­el along­side the great Julian Bleeck­er and a host of oth­ers at the annu­al TU Delft Design & AI sym­po­sium in October.

But aside from that, I will keep my head down and focus on com­plet­ing my the­sis. The aim is to hand it in by the end of Novem­ber. So, two more months on the clock. Will I make it? Let’s find out!

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.