Participatory Design Shapes Governance at ACM FAccT Conference on AI Fairness

At the ACM FAccT conference, a significant participatory design initiative was launched to enhance reflexive governance, serving as a vital platform for activists and researchers scrutinizing the implications of emerging AI and ML technologies. This initiative integrated an in-person CRAFT session with an asynchronous Polis poll, resulting in a governance-oriented report for FAccT leadership. Attendees contributed to the agenda by crafting seed statements, introducing new ideas, and revealing patterns of consensus, dissent, and uncertainty through voting. This marks one of the initial applications of participatory design in a setting that critically assesses the societal effects of artificial intelligence. The conference unites academics, civil society, and government representatives to investigate the broader impacts of both existing and proposed technologies, establishing FAccT as a key environment for critical inquiry into AI. The focus of the participatory design effort was on collaboratively developing a vision for the fairness, accountability, and transparency community.