Reimagining public values in algorithmic futures

Recent scholarly work argues that digital developments around automated decision-making (ADM) and algorithmic systems have led to negative social impacts that are undermining democratic processes and strengthening inequalities.

While this work explores harms and problems arising from ADM systems, our project offers a complementary and corrective perspective with a focus on the role of public valueswithin these systems.The novelty of our project lies in mobilizing anthropological and sociological perspectives to examine how values are deployed in situated practices rather than in the abstract.

Our ambition is to develop new methods and comprehensive frameworks for exploring values in socio-technical systems.

Rather than starting from scratch, we will reinvigorate existing empirical cases, ranging from ADM in insurance, healthcare, public infrastructure and activism by focusing on their relationship to public values.

The project offers an empirically grounded perspective: observing the people behind algorithms, what they do when they build, promote and evaluate these systems.

We focus on moments of alignment andtensions, which then reveal ways in which individuals and societies prioritise and negotiate between competing values.The research process is arranged into three collaboratories – Fieldwork, Maps and Alternatives.

With the term collaboratory, a neologism combining laboratory and collaboration, we emphasize the experimental and participatory nature of our work, which includes ongoing dialogue with stakeholders.

The collaboratories have their separate research goals to promote potentially ground-breaking research: to develop methods and comprehensive conceptual frameworks for exploring current socio-technical developments.