PEAs in PODs: Co-Production of Community Based Public Engagement for Data and AI Research

The operationalization of ethical principles, current and emerging legalization, and the understanding and mitigation of potential consequences to individuals and society are key challenges in the design, development, and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven systems. As part of forthcoming global legislation, organisations, businesses, and researchers developing AI solutions as a service or innovating novel applications will need to openly address ethical principles such as bias, fairness, explainability, transparency, data privacy, accountability, and safety through AI Governance. Developing responsible AI is essential to building public trust, yet few AI researchers know how to engage and capture the insight of diverse people, especially those with lived experiences. This paper presents, an operationalization model for Co-production and Public Engagement in the field AI which focuses on Voice, Value and Variety to guide how academics and businesses might approach meaningful public engagement in the context of research and development of AI products and services. The model is applied within a project called PEAs in PODs which seeks to empower the research and development community to engage meaningfully with traditionally marginalized communities on the subject of AI. Recommendations are made for the integration of co-production methods into AI research to enable meaningful public engagement for all AI researchers.