An extensive inventory of 137 Dutch SMEs regarding the most important considerations regarding the use of emerging digital technologies shows that the selection process is difficult. En trepreneurs wonder which AI application suits them best and what the added (innovative) value is and how they can implement it. This outcome is a clear signal from SMEs to researchers in knowledge institutions and to developers of AI services and applications: Help! Which AI should I choose? With a consortium of students, researchers, and SMEs, we are creating an approach that will help SMEs make the most suitable AI choice. The project develops a data-driven advisory tool that helps SMEs choose, develop, implement and use AI applications focusing on four highly ranked topics.
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This paper presents a comprehensive study on assisting new AI programmers in making responsible choices while programming. The research focused on developing a process model, incorporating design patterns, and utilizing an IDE-based extension to promote responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) practices. The experiment evaluated the effectiveness of the process model and extension, specifically examining their impact on the ability to make responsible choices in AI programming. The results revealed that the use of the process model and extension significantly enhanced the programmers' understanding of Responsible AI principles and their ability to apply them in code development. These findings support existing literature highlighting the positive influence of process models and patterns on code development capabilities. The research further confirmed the importance of incorporating Responsible AI values, as asking relevant questions related to these values resulted in responsible AI practices. Furthermore, the study contributes to bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application by incorporating Responsible AI values into the centre stage of the process model. By doing so, the research not only addresses the existing literature gap, but also ensures the practical implementation of Responsible AI principles.
MULTIFILE
From the article: The ethics guidelines put forward by the AI High Level Expert Group (AI-HLEG) present a list of seven key requirements that Human-centered, trustworthy AI systems should meet. These guidelines are useful for the evaluation of AI systems, but can be complemented by applied methods and tools for the development of trustworthy AI systems in practice. In this position paper we propose a framework for translating the AI-HLEG ethics guidelines into the specific context within which an AI system operates. This approach aligns well with a set of Agile principles commonly employed in software engineering. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2659/
This project addresses the fundamental societal problem that encryption as a technique is available since decades, but has never been widely adopted, mostly because it is too difficult or cumbersome to use for the public at large. PGP illustrates this point well: it is difficult to set-up and use, mainly because of challenges in cryptographic key management. At the same time, the need for encryption has only been growing over the years, and has become an urgent problem with stringent requirements – for instance for electronic communication between doctors and patients – in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and with systematic mass surveillance activities of internationally operating intelligence agencies. The interdisciplinary project "Encryption for all" addresses this fundamental problem via a combination of cryptographic design and user experience design. On the cryptographic side it develops identity-based and attribute-based encryption on top of the attribute-based infrastructure provided by the existing IRMA-identity platform. Identity-based encryption (IBE) is a scientifically well-established technique, which addresses the key management problem in an elegant manner, but IBE has found limited application so far. In this project it will be developed to a practically usable level, exploiting the existing IRMA platform for identification and retrieval of private keys. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) has not reached the same level of maturity yet as IBE, and will be a topic of further research in this project, since it opens up attractive new applications: like a teacher encrypting for her students only, or a company encrypting for all employees with a certain role in the company. On the user experience design side, efforts will be focused on making these encryption techniques really usable (i.e., easy to use, effective, efficient, error resistant) for everyone (e.g., also for people with disabilities or limited digital skills). To do so, an iterative, human-centred and inclusive design approach will be adopted. On a fundamental level, scientific questions will be addressed, such as how to promote the use of security and privacy-enhancing technologies through design, and whether and how usability and accessibility affect the acceptance and use of encryption tools. Here, theories of nudging and boosting and the unified theory of technology acceptance and use (known as UTAUT) will serve as a theoretical basis. On a more applied level, standards like ISO 9241-11 on usability and ISO 9241-220 on the human-centred design process will serve as a guideline. Amongst others, interface designs will be developed and focus groups, participatory design sessions, expert reviews and usability evaluations with potential users of various ages and backgrounds will be conducted, in a user experience and observation laboratory available at HAN University of Applied Sciences. In addition to meeting usability goals, ensuring that the developed encryption techniques also meet national and international accessibility standards will be a particular point of focus. With respect to usability and accessibility, the project will build on the (limited) usability design experiences with the mobile IRMA application.
In leaving the more traditional territories of the concert performance for broader societal contexts, professional musicians increasingly devise music in closer collaboration with their audience rather than present it on a stage. Although the interest for such forms of devising co-creative musicking within the (elderly) health care sector is growing, the work can be considered relatively new. In terms of research, multiple studies have sought to understand the impact of such work on musicians and participants, however little is known about what underpins the musicians’ actions in these settings. With this study, I sought to address this gap by investigating professional musicians’ emerging practices when devising co-creative musicking with elderly people. Three broad concepts were used as a theoretical background to the study: Theory of Practice, co-creative musicking, and Praxialism. Firstly, I used Theory of Practice to help understand the nature of emerging practices in a wider context of change in the field of music and habitus of musicians and participants. Theory of Practice enabled me to consider a practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Secondly, I drew the knowledge from co-creative musicking, which is a concept I gathered from two existing concepts: co-creation and musicking. Musicking (Small, 1998), which considers music as something we do (including any mode of engagement with music), provided a holistic and inclusive way of looking at participation in music-making. The co-creation paradigm encompasses a view on enterprise that consists of bringing together parties to jointly create an outcome that is meaningful to all (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2014). The concept served as a lens to specify the jointness of the musicking and challenge issues of power in the engagement of participants in the creative-productive process. Thirdly, Praxialism considers musicking as an activity that encompasses “musical doers, musical doing, something done and contexts in which the former take place” (Elliott, 1995). Praxialism sets out a vision on music that goes beyond the musical work and includes the meanings and values of those involved (Silverman, Davis & Elliott, 2014). The concept allowed me to examine the work and emerging relationships as a result of devising co-creative musicking from an ethical perspective. Given the subject’s relative newness and rather unexplored status, I examined existing work empirically through an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Four cases were selected where data was gathered through episodic interviewing (Flick, 2009) and participant observation. Elements of a constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) were used for performing an abductive analysis. The analysis included initial coding, focused coding, the use of sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1969 in Hammersley, 2013) and memoing. I wrote a thick description (Geertz, 1973) for each case portraying the work from my personal experience. The descriptions are included in the dissertation as one separate chapter and foreshadow the exposition of the analysis in a next chapter. In-depth study of the creative-productive processes of the cases showed the involvement of multiple co-creative elements, such as a dialogical interaction between musicians and audience. However, participants’ contributions were often adopted implicitly, through the musicians interpreting behaviour and situations. This created a particular power dynamic and challenges as to what extent the negotiation can be considered co-creative. The implicitness of ‘making use’ of another person’s behaviour with the other not (always) being aware of this also triggered an ethical perspective, especially because some of the cases involved participants that were vulnerable. The imbalance in power made me examine the relationship that emerges between musicians and participants. As a result of a closer contact in the co-creative negotiation, I witnessed a contact of a highly personal, sometimes intimate, nature. I recognized elements of two types of connections. One type could be called ‘humanistic’, as a friendship in which there is reciprocal care and interest for the other. The other could be seen as ‘functional’, which means that the relationship is used as a resource for providing input for the creative musicking process. From this angle, I have compared the relationship with that of a relationship of an artist with a muse. After having examined the co-creative and relational sides of the interaction in the four cases, I tuned in to the musicians’ contribution to these processes and relationships. I discovered that their devising in practice consisted of a continuous double balancing act on two axes: one axis considers the other and oneself as its two ends. Another axis concerns the preparedness and unpredictability at its ends. Situated at the intersection of the two axes are the musicians’ intentionality, which is fed by their intentions, values and ethics. The implicitness of the co-creation, the two-sided relationship, the potential vulnerability of participants, and the musicians’ freedom in navigating and negotiation, together, make the devising of co-creative musicking with elderly people an activity that involves ethical challenges that are centred around a tension between prioritizing doing good for the other, associated with a eudaimonic intention, and prioritizing values of the musical art form, resembling a musicianist intention. The results therefore call for a musicianship that involves acting reflectively from an ethical perspective. Doctoral study by Karolien Dons
