Event Details

We are pleased to invite you to CSS’ first event of the term: a workshop hosted by CSS member Dr Luke Moffat, that explores perspectives on trustworthy autonomy, drawing on his ongoing work on Autonomous Systems. The event is co-hosted with the Centre for Technological Futures.

There are multiple narratives about the emergence of autonomous systems (AS), particularly their increasing prevalence in everyday social situations. A common theme among many of these narratives, both positive and critical, is the importance of trust. In order for human beings to accept and work with AS, we need to trust AS. So the story goes. However, there is little discussion about what this trust actually entails. For an AS to be trustworthy, what needs to happen? Does trust always happen in the same way? Can simply knowing more about AS technologies scaffold trustworthiness? How does trust figure in responsible research and innovation?

We invite academics from across disciplines to participate in this workshop, to share, and critically reflect, on the different ways in which we understand trust, in the context of AS. Together, we will explore the interconnections and distinctions between concepts of trust in different disciplinary contexts, to create a collaborative “Trust in Autonomy” map. The aim is to make links between disciplines, and catalyse new collaborations on the theme of trustworthy AS.

Some questions we might explore:

• What role do digital infrastructures, organisational infrastructures and other human/non-human relations play in co-producing trust?
• How is trust configured across and between different publics and forms of expertise?
• What does it mean to place trust in a non-human vs. a human agent?
• How might concepts of trust need augmenting to cover human-machine relations?