Engineering with Value Sensitive Design
David Hendry Value Sensitive Design Lab Information School University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Engineering has Planetary Impacts Why this Sociotechnical Future?
3 Moral Imagination Technical Imagination
— Simon Wecker, 2020 21st Century Engineering Requirements
1. Human agency and oversight 2. Technical robustness and safety 3. Privacy and data governance 4. Transparency 5. Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness, 6. Societal and environmental well-being 7. Accountability — Artificial Intelligence: A European Approach to Excellence and Trust, February 19, 2020
Human Dignity
Autonomous System Exoskeleton: Argumentation
— See: van Wynsberghe, A. (2013).
Value Sensitive Design
An interactional theory and method that accounts for human values in a principled and structured manner throughout the design process.
Pioneered by Prof. Batya Friedman in 1990s — Friedman, 1997; Friedman, Borning, & Hendry, 2017; Friedman and Hendry, 2019
Level of Human Experience Two Solitudes: Bridge the Gap
— van den Hoven, J., 2017 Human Values human flourishing ● environmental sustainability ● human dignity quality of life ● well-being justice ● equity ● …
Engineering Values performance ● scale ● security reliability ● cost robustness ● …
Value Hierarchy
Values Principles | Laws | Ethics Quality of Life ......
Norms Safety of ... Objectives | Goals | Constraints Vulnerable Road Users
... Design Requirements Infrastructure | Devices | Policy ......
— van de Poel, I., 2013 (redrawn) Panel Questions on VSD 1. Three Key Problems
Responsibility. Accounting for human values in 1 technical design and in deployment.
Theory and practice. Developing theory and 2 methods that enable conceptual, empirical, and technical work – integrative and iterative.
Appropriation. Adapting and sharing methods for 3 particular engineering cultures, methodologies, and practices. Panel Questions on VSD 2. Three Solved Problems
We have methods. Use them: Frequently and 1 throughout the product development and deployment processes (design and engineering).
Evaluation criteria. Use human values as a criteria 2 for evaluating system performance (alongside of engineering criteria).
Co-evolve technology and policy. Mutual shaping 3 power – consider the long-term, at scale, diverse stakeholders.
Panel Questions on VSD 3. Three Trends
Standardization. IEEE P7000 and recent work at 1 ISO engineering methodologies. Prescriptive, stepwise refinement methodologies.
Education. Interest in transforming engineering 2 education to include human values (MIT College of Computing, Values in Computing, etc.).
Ethics washing. Need for genuine engagement with 3 values and principles in design processes.
Panel Questions on VSD 4. Three Tractable Questions
Stakeholders. Legitimating direct and indirect human 1 stakeholders and non-human entities with moral standing.
Value Tensions. Beyond trade-offs; Addressing 2 tensions and finding moral-technical sweet spots; Large scale cost-benefit analyses.
Accounting for power. How should differences in 3 power be handled? Summary and takeaways Engineering Strategies • Worse case planning. Precaution. On-going engagement throughout deployment for course correcting, pausing, stopping.
• Saying “no.” When risks are unequally shared or when benefits are uncertain.
• Planet: finite, yet regenerative. Engineer within this constraint. Life-cycle analysis.
Progress, not perfection VSD Intro Account of the State of the Art
Origins Theory Method Applications Looking to the Future Moving Forward Credits
Image of spring leaf out (1) Image of mobile phones and wagon, Artist: Simon Weckert (2) Urban air mobility graphical scenario (3) Image of Exoskeleton (4)
(1) https://www.usanpn.org/news/spring (2) http://www.simonweckert.com/googlemapshacks.html (3) https://cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/10/Natasha- Neogi.pdf (4) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Exoskeletal-Spine-and-Shoulders- for-Full-Body-in-Rol-Taal/8ee956157d572ae89fda4149bda63dd22b74dacc
Moving Forward References
European Commission (2020, Feb 19). White Paper on Artificial Intelligence: A European Approach to Excellence and Trust. https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/commission-white-paper- artificial-intelligence-feb2020_en.pdf Friedman, B. (Ed.) (1997). Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Friedman, B., Hendry, D. G., & Borning, A. (2017). A survey of value sensitive design methods. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, 11(23), 63–125. http://doi.org/10.1561/1100000015 Friedman, B., & Hendry, D. G. (2019). Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. van den Hoven, J. (2017) Ethics for the Digital Age: Where Are the Moral Specs?. In Werthner H., van Harmelen F. (eds) Informatics in the Future. Springer, Cham. van de Poel I. (2013) Translating Values into Design Requirements. In: Michelfelder D., McCarthy N., Goldberg D. (eds) Philosophy and Engineering: Reflections on Practice, Principles and Process. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht van Wynsberghe, A. (2013). Designing robots for care: Care centered value-sensitive design. Science and engineering ethics, 19(2), 407-433.