Reflect on this week’s elective course and its relevance to the development of your project idea
In Week 2, I took a course called Data Ethics as a Practice – the course critically examined how ethics principles are translated into practice, and how they should be put into practice. Alongside being a really well-taught and interesting course, it was relevant for my project idea in a few ways. In the pre-intensive phase, my group chose to research the use of algorithms in Child Welfare, learning about how design choices were value-laden. The prescribed readings dealt with the effects of these systems on families and communities, and included interviews with affected parties on how these systems could be better built (or not built at all) for stakeholders. The systems were prone to error, producing false positives & negatives, reinforcing racial biases and making unexplainable decisions. The families affected suffered reputational and privacy losses, alongside the challenges they were already facing. The systems made use of historical and criminal data, and had design features that seemed to criminalise families instead of support them. However, while families and adults were mentioned, children affected by these systems were not. Although this could be for reasons of informed consent, it would have been useful to hear about how these children felt about the algorithms used on them. If they had not been educated on AI, its risks, and their data rights, coupled with the opaqueness of these systems, they may have found it difficult to understand what was happening to them. It made me aware of the importance of educating children in supporting their rights, and reinforced my impetus to create a teaching plan alongside the board game, so children in any setting can be taught by an adult. The topic really impressed the vulnerabilities of children as a group, to both man and machines.
In a vastly different sense, the course had a fascinating component by a futurist, Filippo Cuttica, where he spoke about methods to imagine the future. He had designed a game called the Futures Bazaar, which “offers a chance to expand horizons, explore new ideas, and develop capacities for foresight, creativity, and storytelling, all in just a few hours”. The game could be part of an event, or a series of workshops, and included a manual, slide deck, and printouts. The aim was to make the project as accessible as possible, allowing anyone to teach Futures thinking. All of these materials are available for download online and have really fantastic graphic design. The project was an inspiration to me, and in a similar sense, I hope to provide the facilitating materials to make my board game easier to incorporate into a group activity or workshop for children, in a way that is fun and engaging.
