Citizens' Jury on the future of AI research
On 23 November 2024, the Citizens' Jury “Artificial Intelligence and Freedom” at the University of Tübingen concluded its work. The participants addressed the question of how science and society can work together to shape the future of artificial intelligence research.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has an impact on the everyday lives of all people. So what should AI research be orientated towards? In Baden-Württemberg, research into artificial intelligence is also financed and supported with public funds. This allows the state to help shape the framework and direction of AI research and set priorities.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) uses computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making abilities of the human mind. An AI is able to extract information from data that a human could never gather, for example because it is too numerous or existing patterns are too complex to recognise. Instead of being programmed for every purpose, an AI can find answers and solve problems on its own.
In the Citizens' Jury, participants contributed their personal views on and experiences with artificial intelligence. Together, they explores the question of how artificial intelligence affects individual and social freedom in their specific personal lives and what opportunities there are for them to participate. The participants were able to exchange ideas with AI experts and gained insights in this way.
Citizens' Jury developed recommendations
Based on this, the Citizens' Jury developed concrete recommendations for the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK). These will be presented to the Ministry in the form of a policy paper in February 2025. Science Minister Petra Olschowski was also present on the last of the four dates to talk with the citizens about their perspectives on research.
The participants in the Citizens' Jury "Artificial Intelligence and Freedom" were randomly selected. This was to ensure fair conditions for participation. The aim was to bring together a group that brings as many different perspectives and individual experiences as possible to the Citizens' Jury.
Municipalities from all four administrative districts represented
When randomly selecting the municipalities, care was taken to ensure that municipalities from all four administrative districts of Baden-Württemberg were represented. At the same time, the Citizens' Jury should bring together people from municipalities of different sizes, which is why one municipality, one small town, one medium-sized town and one large city were randomly selected for each administrative district. The municipalities of Hemsbach, Kleines Wiesental, Reutlingen and Waiblingen were taking part.
A number of citizens from each of the randomly selected municipalities participated in the mini-public that corresponds to the proportion of the population in the respective municipality size in Baden-Württemberg.
Accompanying public events
The Citizens' Jury "Artificial Intelligence and Freedom" met at four different locations and discussed how research on artificial intelligence should be in the future so that it corresponds to social values and also keeps scientific freedom in mind.
In addition to the meetings of the Citizens' Jury, there were accompanying public events the day before each meeting, which focused on the AI topics discussed in the jury. All interested parties were invited to attend. Through various forms of interaction, the accompanying events also gave participants the opportunity to get involved, ask questions and enter into dialogue with experts from AI research and development.
Funding by the Excellence Strategy
The Citizens' Jury was funded by the Excellence Strategy. With the Excellence Strategy, the federal and state governments are strengthening top-level university research. Clusters of excellence in specific fields of research and universities of excellence are funded as strategic support for outstanding university locations. The Centre for Rhetorical Science Communication Research on Artificial Intelligence (RHET AI) and the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen were involved.
Ideal partners and supporters of the Citizens' Jury were the Cluster of Excellence Machine Learning for Science at the University of Tübingen, Cyber Valley GmbH and other organisations and research institutes in Baden-Württemberg. The project team was advised by Mehr Demokratie and an interdisciplinary scientific advisory group. The agency translake GmbH was involved in the implementation.
Research project on the involvement of citizens
As part of the Citizens' Jury, the organisers combined dialogue-based participation with science communication. The initiators of the Citizens' Jury AI and Freedom are particularly keen to ensure that the perspectives of very different people can be incorporated into the wider AI discourse and political decision-making processes relating to publicly funded AI research via the Citizens' Jury.
The Citizens' Jury was therefore being accompanied by a research project by Anika Kaiser from RHET AI, which is investigating the obstacles to the inclusion of citizens and thus their knowledge, their everyday and life experiences and their values in the mini-public and how the knowledge of people with a wide range of identity characteristics can be productively included.