| NSF Org: |
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 13, 2016 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 25, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 1650589 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Frederick Kronz
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2016 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $970,270.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $970,270.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1608 4TH ST STE 201 BERKELEY CA US 94710-1749 (510)643-3891 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Sponsored Projects Office Berkeley CA US 94704-5940 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Information Technology Researc, Special Projects - CNS, CSR-Computer Systems Research, Networking Technology and Syst, STS-Sci, Tech & Society, Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace, INSPIRE |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
INSPIRE
This INSPIRE project is co-funded by the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program in the Social and Economic Sciences Division, which is in the Directorate Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA), and four programs in the Division of Computer and Network Systems, which is in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS), Computer Systems Research (CSR), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).
General Audience Summary
This interdisciplinary project brings together social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, and designers to engage in a collaborative research project. The goal of the project is to obtain a better understanding of value handoffs in complex systems that involve interconnected social and technological agents. The social agents may include humans and organizations, the technological agents may include devices and infrastructures. An example of such a system is the internet, a global communication network that allows almost all users of computers worldwide to connect and exchange information. When there are interactions between agents in such systems, there is a hand off of functions. With regards to the Internet, one such function is the preservation of information content; that handoff involves others that represent specific values such as reliability and trustworthiness. This project focuses on the Internet of things, an extension of the Internet to include physical devices (such as vehicles, buildings, and sensing devices) that are monitored and controlled remotely across that network. The research team will develop three case studies in in this broader domain: bio-sensing, smart homes, and visual data processing. The research team has developed a preliminary model for value handoffs. In each of the three case studies, they will collaborate with an identified technical researcher to use the model to shape the technology, and to gain insights from the technology to refine their model; the version of the model that results from numerous feedback processes that are to occur through the sequence of cases is expected to be applicable to a broad range of socio-technical systems. The results of this project will serve to meet an urgent need to foster rigorous thinking about humans and machines in relation to one another, to making things work well across society, in concert with human need, and in service of societal values. Among the values potentially under consideration in this project are security, privacy, trustworthiness, accountability, transparency, autonomy, intellectual property, freedoms of speech and association, justice, and fairness. Failures to protect value handoffs are likely to pose barriers to technical adoption, and to impose burdens on the least privileged in society. This indicates that models to guide decisions about value handoffs are likely to be of critical importance.
Technical Summary
The research team will develop three case studies in socio-technical integration research in the domain of the Internet of Things: bio-sensing, smart homes, and visual data processing. The PIs will learn from close study of particular cases about actual and potential handoffs of value-laden functions by characterizing them in terms of their provisional model; in turn, the model will undergo evolution as the project develops. The model that results after a number of feedback iterations through the three cases is expected to be applicable to a broad range of socio-technical systems. The project will also facilitate the development of new methods of work and patterns of interaction that could advance a more integrated and less reactive and oppositional process around value handoffs. In addition to making transformative contributions to process and methodology, the project makes transformative intellectual contributions in identifying how and where values are part of technology systems design, in particular as seen in three socially important technology systems (IoT, sensors, and smart homes). The project will bring to bring to light and address the ethical, political, and societal issues that are enmeshed with the design and development of real world complex socio-cyber-physical systems using insights from mature, highly developed theoretical ideas resulting from prior STS research. In the reverse direction, the project holds potential to contribute to the STS literature and to advance the field of STS field with new insights drawn from their collaborative experiences with technologists developing real world functioning systems, reinforcing and challenging controversial positions.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
INSPIRE: Handoff in human-machine compositions: values and
functionality in IoT
NSF SES1537324
09/01/2016 - 08/31/2022
Principal Investigators:
Deirdre K. Mulligan, University of California, Berkeley dmulligan@berkeley.edu
Helen Nissenbaum, Cornell University hn288@cornell.edu
ABSTRACT
The Inspire Grant, Handoff in human-machine compositions:values and functionality in IoT, supported the development, testing, and refinement of an analytic tool to structure and guide inquiry into the value implications of reconfiguring how a function is performed across humans and technical components.
INTELLECTUAL MERIT
Grounded in social studies of technology and values in design, the Handoff analytical model helps those involved in designing, assessing, and using systems identify ethically relevant changes that might otherwise be overlooked. Automating aspects of a function, for example using algorithms rather than humans to moderate content, or shifting between different forms of automation, for example between finger-print and face-print to access a mobile device, are material changes that affect ethical and political values such as responsibility, functional transparency, autonomy, security, privacy, accessibility, equity and freedom of expression.
The Handoff model focuses on how a function is performed?what components (human and technical) are involved and the relationships among them?by a sociotechnical system. The model considers both human and technological elements of a sociotechnical system as actors (components). The model uses the dimension mode to unpack the interactions between components. This attends to the different ways components can act on or engage each other, for example through force or affordances that elicit but do not command actions. In addition, the Handoff analytic includes the trigger?the impetus for the reconfiguration of a function. While this is outside the system, it often highlights specific values that motivated the reconfiguration or are intended to be implicated by it. Finally, the Handoff model allows users to define the sociotechnical system for exploration in a way that supports their inquiry. The notion of system and component are thus relative terms whose application signals the focus of analysis rather than an ontological commitment.
The Handoff analytic, with its emphasis on dissecting how functions are performed, introduces concepts that provide clarity and rigor to sociotechnical assessments and values in design activities. It is a useful analytic tool across a range of contexts and systems. It adds to the boundary objects and boundary negotiation objects necessary to support the interrogation of values in complex sociotechnical systems. The Handoff Model is most effective when used by those with a strong grounding in approaches to thinking about values and/or in conjunction with other analytic tools that help unpack values in a context-relevant way.
BROADER IMPACTS
The Handoff model can assist designers, regulators, researchers and others in assessing how to achieve and retain meaningful compositions of values as technology reconfigures many functions of economic, political, and social importance. While the catalyst for the research was the boom in AI and machine learning based automation, our research has shown that it provides rigor to a wide range of reconfigurations involving the replacement of human actors by technical mechanisms, shifts in machine components, and shifts from human actors who vary with respect to professional training, organizational setting etc. Researchers used the Handoff analytic in a range of contexts including the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, Internet standards, and the responsibilities and practices of technology workers. It was used primarily as a tool for analysis of existing, proposed, and foreseeable sociotechnical systems, however some projects used it to inform design choices during research prototyping and classroom and workshop design activities.
The disruptive impact of the IoT, big data, and AI require methods, tools, and practices that foster rigorous thinking about humans and machines in relation to one another, to make things work well across society, in concert with human need, and in service of societal values. The failure to protect values during such transitions poses a barrier to technical adoption, and often imposes burdens on the least privileged in society. The Handoff model and other sociotechnical research that builds capacity for assessments and designs that center ethical and political values are of critical importance.
In addition to the research outputs that provide useful tools for engineers, designers and policy makers, this project contributed to the production of a value-sensitive technical workforce. Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars gained hands-on experience with analyzing values in the design of complex sociotechnical systems, and communicating these ideas with other researchers, practitioners, and policymakers through attendance at academic and professional conferences. Masters and undergraduate students were exposed to the Handoff models and case studies providing them with tools and examples to use in the workplace.
Last Modified: 01/31/2023
Modified by: Deirdre Mulligan
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