Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People

Case Study

Trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS) are envisaged to become part of our everyday lives. Disabled young people are key end-users and potential co-designers of these future systems, although their experiences and aspirations are rarely acknowledged. This interdisciplinary project brings together disabled young people, social and computer science researchers and school and industry partners. In this project, we are centralising the expertise and aspirations of disabled young people around questions of trust, resilience and capacity in relation to autonomous systems; thus embedding inclusion, equity, responsible research and innovation in studies of TAS.

Our project is exploring the following questions:

• In what ways can we promote equality, diversity and inclusion in relation to TAS through researching together?

• How might designing and researching together enable a meaningful engagement, understanding and analysis of TAS?

• What types of inclusive adaptations require rethinking for TAS to work for disabled young people?

• What motivates our participatory approach?

Our research project on trustworthy autonomous systems highlights how despite the promissory focus of technology within our everyday lives, disabled young people are frequently excluded from STEM education and employment. Further to this, disabled young people are often positioned as passive recipients of developing technologies and autonomous systems, rather than as leading the imagination, design and creation of these future technologies. With this in mind, our project centralises disability as a driving focus for conversations on TAS, with participatory methods and approaches as the only way to achieve this.

Our project is driven by principles and practices of co-production, with participatory workshops led by our partners at Greenacre School. These workshops focused on ‘Imagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems’ built upon established methodologies and the ‘Why Can’t We Dream?’ co-production toolkit available here: Working With Schools & Communities

How does our project address equality, diversity and inclusion through participatory research?

Our project is also guided by principles of collaboration, inclusive and responsible research and equality, diversity and inclusion. With our methods and interdisciplinary research team, we hope that contributions and materials from this project embed EDI and RRI, as well as sharing good practice guidance for the broader TAS research community. We’ve discussed these guiding principles in our first project blog available to read here:

Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People: Our Project Launch!

How are we building effective, collaborative relationships with community partners?

Building effective and collaborative relationships with community partners and co-researchers takes time. Our Reimagining TAS project builds upon established relationships and participatory research, but our methodological design also works at seeking to account for the time it takes to build relationships and more importantly, build and establish trust. One of our first activities of this project was co-producing an understanding of trust and trustworthiness - both significant for conversations on TAS and for participatory research relationships. Together, we’ve written about this in our second TAS project blog post available to read here: On building trust: Co-producing what it means to be trustworthy – UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub (tas.ac.uk)

How are we tackling challenges in carrying out participatory research with young people?

In our ‘Reimagining TAS with DYP’ project, we are responsive to the knowledge and insights of our young people and student co-researchers. This requires flexibility within research methods and design of workshops, as well as slowing down and allowing for time to reflect together on our experiences, knowledge, understanding and ideas for TAS going forward.

We’ve achieved some of this through Harry Gordon’s ‘big question’ method (see below, from Liddiard et al. (in print) and we’ve also co-developed creative and fun methodologies around trust and technology. As we progress through to the next feature of our research project, Maker{Futures} will be leading fun, participatory and creative workshops to build relationships and technological systems together.