Anticipatory Governance in the Technology Sector: Processes, Critiques and Principles for Addressing Grand Challenges in Computing
Widdicks K., Knowles B., Blair G., Ten Holter C., Jirotka M., Lucivero F., Samuel G., Webb H.
With growing understanding of negative social and environmental impacts of computing technologies and increasingly urgent calls to mitigate these impacts, the sector now faces thorny questions around whether and how to govern computing technologies. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners across a wide range of disciplines to explore critical perspectives on and solutions to anticipatory governance in the computing sector. We will draw on participants' diverse expertise to develop a practical and ethical governance roadmap that attends to the computing sector's responsibility to mitigate its own contribution to the climate emergency. Having developed strategies within this specific context, we will then produce a set of governance principles that could be useful to mitigate other harms resulting from computing, nominally those pertaining to efforts around responsible AI, data protection, and mis/disinformation.