Public voices in AI

Project background

A central aspect of responsible AI governance and deployment is ensuring that public hopes, concerns and experiences are accounted for. Yet public voice is often missing from conversations about AI.

The Ada Lovelace Institute is collaborating with the Digital Good Network, The Alan Turing Institute, Elgon Social Research and University College London on a 12-month, UKRI-funded project, Public Voices in AI. This will explore how to represent public voices in AI research, development and policy, and the value of understanding public views and experiences of AI.

Ada’s contributions to the programme are to provide evidence and develop examples of good practice in quantitative and qualitative research through:

1. A nationally representative survey of British people’s attitudes to AI technologies and their governance, following up on our 2023 collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, How do people feel about AI?

2. A qualitative, community-level research project, designed to understand what people across the UK think about AI and the ‘public good’. The project is designed to enable participants to share their priorities and expectations for what a current and future ‘good’ society looks like, and to explore where AI’s opportunities and risks could prevent or enable these visions.

In addition, the programme will support participatory projects with people from groups of society who are negatively affected by AI, or underrepresented in AI research, development and policy.

Project aims

The project will run from April 2024 to March 2025. By providing new evidence on UK-wide public attitudes towards AI technologies and their impact on people, this work will inform the work of people throughout AI ecosystem, from policymakers to industry, ensuring it is aligned with expectations, values, hopes and concerns of people, including those experiencing and affected by technologies.