Tim led a ‘Bridging the Gap’ session at the British Retail Consortium’s Summer School, which worked with emerging retail business leaders to explore their practice through the lenses of people, planet, purpose and profit.
Over the course of two hours, I spoke with small groups of delegates from many different retail businesses, from Levis and World Duty Free, to B&Q, the Co-operative and Boots. In addition to sharing insights from the People’s Panel on AI, I used prototype of our Good Governance Game to foster discussions about different approaches that can be used to hear from affected communities when exploring use of data and AI.
Feedback and learning for Governance Game development
The game worked well at a stall to engage small groups of 4 - 7 in 10 minute blocks. I invited each group to sit down, introduce how they see AI being used in their organisation, and then to pick up pre-dealt role and method cards. We then played one round of the game, inviting each person to suggest a method for public engagement in a scenario based on one of those suggested in the introductions. For example, we had scenarios based on facial recognition for store security, data analysis for fraud prevention, and using AI to develop marketing resources.
Participants were bold in suggesting engaging methods for listening to publics, but also noted they had little power or capacity to actual implement these methods in practice in their organisations. A particular challenge was in inviting participants to imagine and think about ‘affected communities’ beyond internal stakeholder and staff, with many suggesting methods be used to engage across teams, rather than engage publics. This highlights that there may be contexts in which the game or accompanying resources need to do more to help participants think about potential impacts of different technologies.
Looking ahead
In a few weeks I’m giving an hour-long seminar for some of the BRC Summer School delegates, and will look to focus on identifying where and how data and AI affects different communities in this.
Thanks to Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking for supporting this opportunity, through my year-long fellowship at the centre.