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Picking Apart the Black Box: Sociotechnical Contours of Accessibility in AI/ML Software Engineering

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Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering (AHFE 2020)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1208))

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Abstract

This paper considers everyday software engineering (SE) work practices in applied artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) development projects. As contemporary AI/ML systems become increasingly embedded into a wide array of everyday digital services, a number of concerns emerge over the opaque and “black box” constitution of these technical capabilities. How do software developers come to understand complex AI/ML capabilities and how do they explain their inner-workings to others? This paper empirically investigates these questions by drawing on an ethnographic study of AI/ML research and development at a large, global technology and services company, highlighting the situated, careful labor involved in configuring access around AI/ML systems and services. By rendering these situated practices visible, this paper contributes important provocations for current discourses on AI explainability (XAI) and interpretability: rather than a quality or component of a model, system, or interface, access emerges through ongoing, unfolding, and effortful sociotechnical encounters.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to informants and collaborators – your time, experiences, and insights have been a gift and are invaluable to this work. All opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect any institutional endorsement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Research – Almaden, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA, USA

    Christine T. Wolf

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  1. Christine T. Wolf
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Correspondence to Christine T. Wolf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Research - Almaden, San Jose, CA, USA

    Jim Spohrer

  2. Centre for Economics and Public Administration, London, UK

    Christine Leitner

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Wolf, C.T. (2020). Picking Apart the Black Box: Sociotechnical Contours of Accessibility in AI/ML Software Engineering. In: Spohrer, J., Leitner, C. (eds) Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering. AHFE 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1208. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51057-2_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51057-2_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-51056-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-51057-2

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