This project set out to explore the way that ethical AI is being figured in healthcare with a particular focus in the UK, with the aim to open up the possibilities for alternative reconfigurations. Such a sentiment is at the heart of a feminist STS perspective which seeks to unsettle the dominant narratives and voices and open up possibilities for new ways of understanding, designing and living with technology (see Suchman 2007).
While my original thinking was to get some people and practitioners who design, work and live with these technologies and with them co-design alternative figurations and come up with alternative stories for ethical AI, Covid-19 forced a rethink.
The disruption of the pandemic meant that getting hold of healthcare practitioners and generally people physically in the same room was now impossible. This limitation presented an opportunity as it forced a deeper methodological thinking.
If people and settings (in this case, those connected with the healthcare setting) are out of reach and bounds where and how can we find these alternative stories and figurations? What is the role of technology in this case when we all sit in front of our screens via Zoom, teams or other online platforms trying to make a connection?
But was it ever thus? Is there such a thing as a pure/unmediated interaction, or is this technologically mediated interaction changing the stories that can be told?
The lessons by feminist STS tell us that indeed these different comings-together are changing the stories that can be told and the figurations that emerge. But they remind us, that it was ever thus! In Verran’s words, ‘[e]xperience and stories of that experience are not the same thing’ (2002: 731).The stories and figurations are not immutable mobiles that pre-exist in the minds of our participants and we can access them, successfully or not, by cleverly devising ways to get them out of their brains and into our note pads!
These stories and figurations are performed, worked and re-worked, shaping and shaped by our very own methods (Lury and Wakeford 2012). As my own research shows, they are messy and inconsistent, yet they can still hold in places, sometimes they travel successfully, others not (Kerasidou 2019; 2017).
With these points firmly and freshly in mind, and with covid’s disruptive innovation opportunity presented, the workshop of this project was reimagined and redesigned.
We allowed ourselves to experiment and explore with no clear sight of where this will lead us but with a firm belief that it will ‘move’ us to a different, alternative place. That’s all we could ask. And that is a lot!