Civic Machines

Background

In today's societies, algorithms have become deeply embedded, touching almost every facet of our daily lives. Despite their pervasive influence, much of their impact on society occurs invisibly and without our conscious awareness. This is why the Civic Machines lab is dedicated to making these effects more visible and intentional. Its mission goes beyond simply quantifying the negative impacts of algorithms; it also aims to design algorithms and machines that benefit all members of society, not just their creators or initial owners. By shifting the focus from unconscious to conscious algorithmic integration, the lab strives to ensure that these technologies serve the diverse needs and interests of all stakeholders within our communities.

From unconscious to conscious algorithmic integration

The Civic Machines lab is inherently a public interest and responsible tech lab. It is specifically dedicated to ensuring the fair integration of algorithms into society. The lab's goal is to address algorithmic unfairness both in foundational machine learning research and when algorithms are implemented in society, cultivating a world where emerging technologies act as agents for creating fairer and more sustainable societies. To do this, the lab will use creative practices to find the best solutions to problems our society faces or will face in the future. This means designing, building, testing, and improving models, systems, and processes that acknowledge real-world constraints and meet societal needs, all while trying to push the boundaries of what a better world should be.

Next steps

The lab will initially focus on three key topics:

• AI & Work: how generative AI impacts creators.
• Political Discourse & AI: how and to what extend are algorithms used to perform political campaigning and entice the public.
• Sociotechnical alignment: on what data and with which techniques should ML models be trained in order to conform to a diverse set of cultural and social values.