Working with affective computing:Exploring UK public perceptions of AI enabled workplace surveillance

This paper explores public perceptions around the role of affective computing in the workplace. It uses a series of design fictions with 46 UK based participants, unpacking their perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of tracking the emotional state of workers. The scenario focuses on mundane uses of biometric sensing in a sales environment, and how this could shape management approaches with workers. The paper structure is as follows: section 1 provides a brief introduction; section 2 provides an overview of the innovative design fiction methodology; section 3 explores wider shifts around IT in the workplace; section 4 provides some legal analysis exploring emergence of AI in the workplace; and section 5 presents themes from the study data. The latter section includes discussion on concerns around functionality and accuracy of affective computing systems, and their impacts on surveillance, human agency, and worker/management interactions

Critically Envisioning Biometric Artificial Intelligence in Law Enforcement

This report presents an overview of the Critically Exploring Biometric AI Futures project led by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the University of Stirling. This short 3-month project explored the use of new Biometric Artificial Intelligence (AI) in law enforcement, the challenges of fostering trust around deployment and debates surrounding social, ethical and legal concerns

Critically Envisioning Biometric Artificial Intelligence in Law Enforcement

This report presents an overview of the Critically Exploring Biometric AI Futures project led by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the University of Stirling. This short 3-month project explored the use of new Biometric Artificial Intelligence (AI) in law enforcement, the challenges of fostering trust around deployment and debates surrounding social, ethical and legal concerns

When readers talk about characters as if they were real, how do they talk about them? Empathy and gossip in reading group discourse

It is often claimed that readers talk about fictional characters as if they were real. This article examines how this is done through the analysis of five reading groups talking about The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, leading to a new framework for understanding and analysing this phenomenon in book talk. Reading group discourse was selected as it provided situated and contextualised responses to the book, allowing for the empirical examination of reading-in-talk (Meyers 2009) from naturally occurring reading events. The analysis follows a discourse dynamic approach (Cameron, 2010), which views interaction as ongoing processes within a dynamic system (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), influenced by socio-cultural and personal variables and subject to shifts and stabilisations in the flow of conversation. Empathy was identified as underpinning assumptions of how readers talk about characters. This was supported by the reading group data, where it was found that readers performed both automatic and deliberate empathy. To better understand how readers talked about characters as if they were real, deliberate empathy was further refined into attribution (Palmer 2004) and positioning (Harré, 2012) and additional processes (stereotyping, extension, mediation and synechdocal interpretation) were identified. Using these processes, readers were found to gossip about characters, evaluating their behaviour by drawing on a range of social knowledge, personal experience, textual detail and extensions of the text. The evaluations led to understanding of characters that ranged from complex individuality to stereotypes. However, even when stereotyping, by drawing on real world social knowledge and norms, these evaluations underpin how readers talk about fictional characters as if they were real. In addition, evidence of self-reflection alongside consideration of real-world social groups emerging from discussion of characters as if they were real supports existing scholarship that identifies reading groups as sites of intellectual and social development