Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation.

Geoengineering is defined as the 'deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming'. The technological proposals for doing this are highly speculative. Research is at an early stage, but there is a strong consensus that technologies would, if realisable, have profound and surprising ramifications. Geoengineering would seem to be an archetype of technology as social experiment, blurring lines that separate research from deployment and scientific knowledge from technological artefacts. Looking into the experimental systems of geoengineering, we can see the negotiation of what is known and unknown. The paper argues that, in renegotiating such systems, we can approach a new mode of governance-collective experimentation. This has important ramifications not just for how we imagine future geoengineering technologies, but also for how we govern geoengineering experiments currently under discussion

Rejecting acceptance: learning from public dialogue on self-driving vehicles

Abstract The investment and excitement surrounding self-driving vehicles are huge. We know from earlier transport innovations that technological transitions can reshape lives, livelihoods, and places in profound ways. There is therefore a case for wide democratic debate, but how should this take place? In this paper, we explore the tensions between democratic experiments and technological ones with a focus on policy for nascent self-driving/automated vehicles. We describe a dominant model of public engagement that imagines increased public awareness leading to acceptance and then adoption of the technology. We explore the flaws in this model, particularly in how it treats members of the public as users rather than citizens and the presumption that the technology is well-defined. Analysing two large public dialogue exercises in which we were involved, our conclusion is that public dialogue can contribute to shifting established ideas about both technologies and the public, but that this reframing demands openness on the part of policymakers and other stakeholders. Rather than seeing public dialogues as individual exercises, it would be better to evaluate the governance of emerging technologies in terms of whether it takes place ‘in dialogue’

We need a Weizenbaum test for AI

Alan Turing introduced his 1950 paper on Computing Machinery and Intelligence with the question “Can machines think?” But rather than engaging in what he regarded as never-ending subjective debate about definitions of intelligence, he instead proposed a thought experiment. His “imitation game” offered a test in which an evaluator held conversations with a human and a computer. If the evaluator failed to tell them apart, the computer could be said to have exhibited artificial intelligence (AI)

Scientific advice on the move: the UK mobile phone risk issue as a public experiment

The UK controversy over the health risks of mobile phones was at its peak around 1999–2000, at a time when policymakers were beginning to endorse moves towards greater openness in the practice of expert advice. One explanation for the subsequent calming of this controversy is that people’s sense of the benefits outweighed the minor uncertainties. However, this fails to explain the politics of mobile phone technology and, by positioning expert advice as neutral, offers no lessons for future expert practice. In this article, I argue that the mobile phones case can more productively be seen as one of public experiment. Rather than seeking closure, experts opened up the issue, made explicit previously obscured uncertainties and invited new research questions. In doing so, they remobilised previously static constructions of both science and public concern. This analysis challenges the distinction between science-as-expertise and science-as-experiment, with important implications for advisory practices and structures. This article is published as part of a thematic collection dedicated to scientific advice to governments

The (co-)production of public uncertainty: UK scientific advice on mobile phone health risks

UK scientific advice on the possible health risks of mobile phones has embraced (or seems to be embracing) broader engagement with interested non-experts. This paper explains the context of lost credibility that made such a development necessary, and the implications of greater engagement for the construction (and expert control) of “public concern.” I narrate how scientific advice matured from an approach based on compliance with guidelines to a style of “public science” in which issues such as trust and democracy were intertwined with scientific risk assessment. This paper develops existing conceptions of the “public understanding of science” with an explanation based around the co-production of scientific and social order. Using a narrative drawn from a series of in-depth interviews with scientists and policymakers, I explain how expert reformulation of the state of scientific uncertainty within a public controversy reveals constructions of “The Public,” and the desired extent of their engagement. Constructions of the public changed at the same time as a construction of uncertainty as solely an expert concern was molded into a state of politically workable public uncertainty. This paper demonstrates how publics can be constructed as instruments of credible policymaking, and suggests the potential for public alienation if non-experts feel they have not been fairly represented

Experiment earth: Responsible innovation in geoengineering

Experiments in geoengineering - intentionally manipulating the Earth's climate to reduce global warming - have become the focus of a vital debate about responsible science and innovation. Drawing on three years of sociological research working with scientists on one of the world's first major geoengineering projects, this book examines the politics of experimentation. Geoengineering provides a test case for rethinking the responsibilities of scientists and asking how science can take better care of the futures that it helps bring about. This book gives students, researchers and the general reader interested in the place of science in contemporary society a compelling framework for future thinking and discussion

How can we know a self-driving car is safe?

Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performance—what a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineers’ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. ‘How safe is safe enough?’ prompts further questions: ‘safe enough for what?’ and ‘safe enough for whom?