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AI & Society

Individual Assignment: Paper

Background

In this course you work in a team to design a contestable computer vision-based urban AI system. You also work hands-on with ML tools, and ethics tool, and read and reflect on papers related to the field, to help ground your design work. This paper assignment is the way for you to demonstrate what you have learned throughout the course in such a way that we as instructors can make a formal assessment. 

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this assignment you will be able to argue in written format for a particular set of design decisions aimed at (1) creating a design concept for an urban AI system and (2) ensuring the proposed design is responsive to citizens’ needs by making it contestable.

Instructions

We won’t give a step-by-step set of instructions for writing a paper, but will provide a set of tips and suggestions that should help you write a good paper.

  • Write throughout the course. Try to produce raw material in the form of short notes, each encompassing one idea, that you can adapt later on
  • Create an outline before sitting down to write in full
  • Use visual material to illustrate your argument, in particular when describing your design
  • Write in your own words
  • Have a look at examples of successful papers from last year’s course

Product

The outcome of this assignment is a paper, which adheres to the following requirements:

  • Uses the “old” ACM SIGCHI Paper Format
  • Up to 6 pages in length (not including references)
  • Delivered in PDF format

The contents of the paper should include:

  • The context you designed for (e.g. the urban issue, the need of the municipality, etc.)
  • A high-level description of the design solution
  • A description of the proposed dataset and model that enables the design solution
  • An analysis of possible reasons why the decisions made by the proposed solution may be contested, and by whom (i.e. an analysis of the direct and indirect stakeholders, their values and interests, and how those might be impacted)
  • A description of and rationale for your design’s contestability “features” (a) at design-time and (b) at use-time
  • A discussion and evaluation of these contestability features, including shortcomings, limitations, etc. 

Follow-up

The paper will be graded based on the following criteria:

  • Clarity of the argumentation
  • Strength of the argumentation
  • Depths of the exploration of practical and theoretical design issues
  • Consistency of argumentation with the design concepts
  • Effective use of supporting literature