Imagining AI and a Prospective Metaverse: A Participatory Speculative Design Case Study from Japan and Reflections from Germany
Abstract: AI development and AI ethics are continually shaped by imaginations of future technology and narratives about socio-technical societies. The emergence and distribution of these narratives is limited with respect to both, how lay citizens and experts differently form and influence these narratives and how narratives from global north are more dominant than from global south. Local perspectives and the expertise of individual everyday life realities represent highly important factors for technology adoption processes, yet they are often neglected in development processes. In our presentation, we introduce a participatory speculative design framework for fostering an accessible AI discourse based on situated knowledge with the aim of contributing to the plurality of technology visions. Building on previous cross-cultural research about speculative perceptions of AI future societies and digital common good imaginations we present how the role and ethics of AI are imagined by Japanese citizens in a workshop on prospective Metaverse societies. Our approach enables sensemaking processes of and through technology design, revealing participants' anticipations of pressing societal problems, imagined problem solving capacities of AI technology, and underlying societal value systems. The resulting visions discuss AI enhanced prospective democratic practice in the light of pressing problems of Japan‘s silver democracy. Furthermore, future social relationships influenced by Japanese VR-culture and AI technology impacting the construction of identity, the preservation of Japanese food culture, and possibilities of natural disaster preparedness are discussed. These results show that the applied methodological approach allows to highlight how situated knowledge informs the imagination of future technologies. We conclude the presentation by illustrating how intercultural discourse can emerge from presenting the speculated futures as discussion starters to people in other countries, here Germany, and how the reflection on local visions can contribute to the creation and appreciation of futures taking into account local contexts.
Author bios: Michel Hohendanner is a research associate at the Munich Center for Digital Sciences and AI at the Munich University of Applied Sciences (MUAS), Germany. He is also a doctoral candidate at the Faculty for Industrial Design at the University of Wuppertal. Previously he was a visiting researcher at KEIO University in Tokyo, Japan, with Prof. Osawa and at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, with Prof. Mizuno. His research interests include the social impact of increasingly digitalized living environments and the role of design in these contexts.
Chiara Ullstein is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Chair of Cyber Trust (Department of Informatics) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Previously she was a visiting researcher at KEIO University in Tokyo, Japan, with Prof. Osawa, and at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, with Prof. Mizuno. In her research she investigates citizen perception of AI and citizen participation in AI development and AI regulation. Her current cross-cultural studies focus on the perception of facial processing technologies and future visions of AI and the Metaverse.
[Please note that the authors of this presentation requested not to be recorded]
#SpeculativeDesign #ParticipatoryProcess #Accessibility #Designers/Developers #Japan #Germany
