Uninvited Responses to a Questionnaire

Eryk Salvaggio says we must dispense with myths if we are to think more clearly about what AI actually is and does.

Within the last decade a large corpus of work in HCI as well as the commercial design practice has focused on systematically addressing questions of ethics, values and moral considerations embedded in the design of digital technology. Recent critiques have highlighted that these efforts fall short of actual transformative impact. We use the sociological concept of imaginaries to argue that value and ethics work needs to be considered within the larger context of socially shared visions of a desirable future and outline how existing sociotechnical imaginaries pre-frame contexts in which value work is deployed. We demonstrate that imaginaries provide the language and conceptual framework necessary to address underlying ethical worldviews before ethics driven design methods and toolkits can be successfully employed. Finally we suggest how to engage imaginaries to facilitate a broader shift towards a more politically sensitive approach to designerly value work.