Reflections and Directions: WeRobot 2022 Retrospective
A compelling a mix of inspiration for the future, yet sobriety for tech law & policy.
UW School of Law & The Tech Policy Lab Host WeRobot 2022
Orchestrated by the Tech Policy Lab of the University of Washington School of Law, WeRobot 2022 took place during September of 2022. Be sure to check out the WeRobot 2022 YouTube Playlist.
An apprehensive start
When I first arrived on the Seattle campus of University of Washington Law School, I felt rather uneasy: what I came to share was not entirely about legislation or policy, directly. On a personal note, I was feeling unwell about the trip for two weeks beforehand, and even during the flight itself. When I arrived at the hotel, I felt a bit of that old familiar fun and adventurous, nerdy curiosity that I fell in love with during undergrad. Yet as the morning session of day one arrived, I felt less-than-ideal about a positive outcome from my time there. This was no fault of the WeRobot crew; the rest of this story is about how much I would come to enjoy time around this community.
I share this as a personal context point, and to remind myself of the power (and empowering nature) of a well-managed academic & learning communities. I recall a formative term paper I wrote during undergraduate days at University at Albany, SUNY for coursework as Informatics Peer Educator at School of Education: a constructive and accessible educational space can act like a “well-tended hearth.” I was reminded again how much a sense of belonging can be made genuine not only in direct interactions, but in being able to observe people, ideas, questions, and conversations handled with care and respect; modeling matters.
Several months later, I am still touched by the model of how a community can push each other to find the best ideas, theories, arguments, and tools available to deal with daunting challenges — all with encouragement and a sense of investing in each others’ potential.
The discussions grew intense and intensely interesting, and soon the poster session was at hand. I anticipated going through the motions and then bowing out gracefully due to lack of audience, but I was wrong. I had a stream of questions and comments at both posters, with discussions from fellow game designers to those interested in some of the technical or cognitive science components to our projects. As the day went on, the atmosphere and sense of purpose and reverence for the challenge won me over.
See also:
- “Towards Sharing Cognitive Environments: Methodology and Theory — Virtual Reality, Embodied Intelligence, and Beyond”
- “Our Virtual Lives and Digital Companionship: Opportunities and Challenges of Shared Experience in an Augmented Century”
- JOPRO’s Cognition Futures archived portfolio
Conference agenda and the topics
Due to the nature of the sensitive topic at hand, I won’t go into any specifics about the papers or discussions.
See also:
- WeRobot 2023 Program: https://werobot2022.com/program
- Crootof, Rebecca and Kaminski, Margot E. and Price II, William Nicholson, Humans in the Loop (March 25, 2022). 76 Vanderbilt Law Review 429 (2023), U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper №22–10, U of Michigan Public Law Research Paper №22–011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4066781 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4066781
Constructive Critique and Empowering Arguments
For those who never experienced the joy of the Princeton Envision conference series (particularly in person), it’s hard to explain the nature of its atmosphere. It was the first time — as a non-traditional, first-gen, undergraduate student with no particular familiarity with “academia” — that I had experienced a community of people definitively interested in the future, in a holistic and inclusive fashion. Technology and ethics and society were all on the table. It remains one of the most formative experiences of my personal and professional life, so when I talk about Princeton Envision, it is generally with the highest of regards.
While WeRobot 2022 was a fairly different kind of event, the spirit held, and it held in a way I had not experienced in person for some time — Envision “IRL” ended in 2019, with a few subsequent online endeavors.
The difference is, WeRobot felt more “mature” both in terms of its predominance of graduate students and law professionals, but also due to the deeper focus on a specific arena. I would even say, there was a sober sense of urgency and constrictive criticism which furthered this atmosphere; beyond tropes or derogatory remarks about “lawyers” squabbling over definitions, there was a sense of seriousness and respect for how much getting things right (or as best as they could be) mattered — and mattered right now. Not in the distant future, or the near future, but in the immediate present and what was to come.
Community spirit, grounded in reverence for the work ahead
I deeply encourage spending time, even if from afar, around folks on the front lines of what is affecting the world as-it-is — and most ideally, if those involved have a reasonable eye toward the future. WeRobot offered this in a unique, niche area, that I would hope all those dealing with technology and innovation would show respect and attention. It is hard work to manage and mitigate the ambiguity and difficulty that already exists, and has been building for some time — no less what is on the way.
Speakers at this event, even with their pressing for rigor, and sometimes severe critique, demonstrated the above in a truly inspiring way. Several months later, I am still touched by the model of how a community can push each other to find the best ideas, theories, arguments, and tools available to deal with daunting challenges — all with encouragement and a sense of investing in each others’ potential.
When an unforeseen situation affected the conference agenda, a significant conversation was held in its stead. Dr. Tim Brown (of UW’s Bioethics) led a discussion with Dr. Christopher Dancy about race, ethics, law, and technology. The way all of this unfolded further reminded me of Envision, with its palpable sense of humanity and of striving to make space for things that matter, even when circumstances change.
See also:
- Dr. Tim Brown: http://tmbrwn.com/
- Dr. Christopher L. Dancy: http://personal.psu.edu/cld5070/
- Dancy’s The Human in Computing and Cognition Lab: https://sites.psu.edu/thicc/
The Changing Landscape(s) of The Future
As I delve deeper into editorial reflection, WeRobot 2022 was a critical experience for me in terms of both laying out the stage of the current techno-political arena (from a legislative/policy vantage point), as well as the nature of the work at hand on the technical, engineering, and theoretical facets of the work to be done.
Interpretability, explainability…
“Machine Learning Interpretability and Explainability” is one of the most fascinating arenas for me in terms of the tension and pressure between all facets of the society-ethics-technology universe. I certainly claim no expertise, but I do aim to model interest and intrigue as someone creating technology and guiding others through its generation, utilization, and interpretation or comprehension.
The discussion by Kaminski on “Humans in the Loop” (see reference above), is a solid introduction to many of these concerns, particularly focusing on the nature of regulation. What are the merits and struggles of a human being put in the regulatory loop of “complex and artificially intelligent” machines, systems, or processes? What kinds of responsibility should engineers and developers take when making technology that will necessitate regulation, monitoring, supervision, or potentially intervention?
…and explicitness: a new role for cognitive science?
Borrowing from a domain I’m slightly more familiar with, my thoughts would continue to evolve on “the cognitive science” project (and its critiques) as a whole. Potentially vastly different these domains may be, there were interesting takeaways for me in terms of both how communicability (or computability) are critical factors: both in terms of an arena being regulated, but also in terms of the folks doing the work of building theories, and building tools or technological implementations that are associated with these theories, models, or frameworks.
The gravity of discussion and practicality-driven nature of pressure for rigor and explainability left a strong impression. I didn’t grasp it at the time, but I think it subconsciously would reinforce some of the motivation for the Cognition Futures Methodology Project at OREL. There are many lenses by which to associate or motivate theoretical work, and the nature of WeRobot 2022 was able to convey a unique (to me) view of factors to keep in mind when sifting through, or crafting, particular innovation or theoretical developments.
What the rest of this Century has in store
To conclude with some rather Big Picture thoughts, I’ll list some key points:
- The battlefield across many disciplines, seeing the lay of the land: seeing discussion and deliberation so deeply embedded within the society-ethics-tech nexus has furthered my understanding of other discipline-and-society mesh points.
- Explicitness and comprehension of aim or intent will be one of the hardest mountains to climb. The ascent will be challenging whatever face climbed, with many disciplines striving to scale it.
- Agency and autonomy are watch words (alongside “liability” or “credit”, perhaps); the way information and attribution evolve will be of interest to many creators, inventors, and seekers. Even thinking of things like Dr Michael Levin's “agential materials”, we are faced with a complex frontier of when intentions, causes, and sovereignty emerge and take hold.
- More concretely: the role of defining what a person is and their relationship to the technology they make, or the outputs they make with technology will be crucial.
- Development and Diversity: “Diverse Intelligences” has a wonderful Summer Institute, but in addition to that cross-biological-machine lens, there is a broader sense of trajectory at hand. Developmental trajectory, as well as diversity of ontogenetic experiences, are fertile (and substantially needed) areas of exploration. Monolithic framings of experience are foundations of sand for many theories — and perhaps policies and laws as as well.
Looking ahead to WeRobot 2023
I finish this writing towards the end of June 2023, in great anticipation of WeRobot 2023, which will be held in Boston! With much talk of gpt-3/4/5, and auto/chat-gpt, Midjourney, DALLE, and other generative-AI tools now widely available, one must expect that to be a key discussion point this year. There is also more exploration of mixed, extended, or augmented/virtual reality — with new advances in hardware and potentially new ways for communities to evolved within those spaces.
At present, I’m part of two submissions to WeRobot 2023:
- “Imbuing Nuance and Self-Reflection into Digital Worlds: An EdTech Startup’s Quest for Progressive Technology Development”, alongside of the PlotTwisters.org crew of Jenny Liu Zhang, Young-Kyung Kim, Avery Lim, and Hadasa Bogatean.
- “A Review of Methods for Enhancing Context Within Educational & Research Tools Via Generative AI: Using ChatGPT to Expand FrontierMap”, as part of OREL/Cognition Futures, with Bradly Alicea.
I hope to be at WeRobot 2023 accepted or not, and look forward very much to the wonderful community I was introduced to last year. Please reach out if you will be in the Boston area at that time, and especially if you will be at the event!
- Jes
2023 June
Boston
Originally published at https://www.jesparent.com.
