Abstract
In this talk, I introduce the project ‘The Future of Good Decisions: An evolutionary approach to human-AI government administrative decision-making’, recently funded by a UK fellowship scheme to run from 2022-2029. This project addresses the impasse between automated decision-making and core values of the rule of law (like fairness and transparency). Moving past today’s dominant question of whether machine learning technologies can be made to conform to legal criteria, or a new regulatory paradigm should be defined by data science, it asks: how can our ideas of good administrative decisions evolve for the coming age when humans and machines are indistinguishable? The project aims to articulate conceptions of decision quality that are appropriate to evolving technosocial ecologies; to integrate those conceptions with contemporary legal theory and jurisprudence; and to identify reform to administrative decision practices and related legal doctrines. This talk has three main aims. First, I will orient the project’s overall approach in relation to dominant strategies to protect administrative decision-making, including ‘human in the loop’. Second, I will outline its unique multi-method research design. Finally, I will explain the use of collaborative ‘Live Action Role Play’ in ‘prefiguring’ models of participatory deliberation, and in reflecting on value and quality in decision-making processes.