HomeWorkshop

Ethnography & AI Workshop: the role of ethnography in AI development

25th April, 1-5 pm BST, Online | Equiano Institute

On behalf of the Equiano Institute, it is our pleasure to invite you to our workshop on the role of ethnography in AI development. Please find below more details about what we’re planning as well as more information on the possible forms of participation.

About the Workshop

This online workshop aims to bring together ethnography experts from across the world interested in AI alignment, safety, and development to discuss the potential new ethnographic research directions in the age of AI and foster an innovative research network. The size of this cohort of participants will be carefully customised to facilitate deep dives, feedback from a trusted community, and collaborative brainstorming about further promising research directions. We expect up to 30 participants. Through this event, we hope to promote innovative ethnographic methodologies, foster an engaged research community, and facilitate new research collaborations at the intersection of ethnography and AI.

Key Dates

  • Call for proposals: by 7th March
  • Selection notification: by 16th March
  • Full submission: by 11th April
  • Content circulation: 18th April
  • Online Workshop: 25th April

Themes For Exploration

Ethnography in AI design and development
  • Ethnography and participation
  • Ethnographic end-user studies
  • Embedded ethnography in the AI lifecycle
    • Exploratory studies
  • Agent ethnography
  • Anthropological future studies (see van Voorst)
  • Anthropological fiction (van Voorst, 2024)
  • Ethnographic AI engineering (see Nick Seaver)
    • Ethnography in AI safety
  • Human-centred evaluations, such as HIEs
  • The NIST AI Risk Management Framework (Dotan et al., 2024)

    • Possible Forms of Participation

    • Reviewer: In this role, you would be involved in reviewing the submitted abstracts. You would also be welcome to join the workshop sessions and engage in the discussions.
    • Select Committee: Chinasa T. Okolo
    • Presenter: In this role, you will submit a unique piece of writing and present it for 5-7 minutes at one of the relevant workshop sessions. .
    • Participant: In this role, you will be able to join the workshop sessions, listen to the presentations, and engage in the discussions. Submission link .

    For more informationworkshop @ equiano.instituteWe are keen to collaborate with other members of the research community.

    Reference List – Ethnography

    A reference list

    We need ethnographic AI safety studies

    We need to be serious ... think about it