SOCIAL SCIENCE INSIGHTS
FOR SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL TECHNOLOGY

Dovetail Labs worked closely with key stakeholders at Microsoft to provide independent, rigorous social science research and advising to assess the state of AI and related technologies in five global regions. Our analysis found major gaps in the literature and significant industry-wide implications.

Alexa Hagerty, Dovetail Labs’ Founder, presented a research talk at Data + Society on Wednesday, September 11, 2019. The title of the talk was "The Promises and Limitations of the “Empirical Turn” in AI Ethics."

Alexa Hagerty, Dovetail Labs' Founder, shared research on the social impacts of technology, which was elaborated in a recent article in Pacific Standard and also spoke with journalists at the New York times regarding her findings.

Dovetail Labs Researcher Tomo Sugimoto has published an essay on Medium exploring how sexism may be impeding the Japanese AI and robotics industries.

Chinese companies are keeping close tabs on the successes and public missteps of leading technology companies, writes Dovetail Labs researcher Zoe Hatten in an essay on Medium.

Dovetail Labs Researcher Renata Barreto published an essay on Medium outlining emerging AI lie detection technology that is being deployed by governments and corporations around the world, without addressing the underlying ethical implications and challenges.

Dovetail Labs Researcher Renata Barreto has published an essay on the DTL Medium channel asking how the growing role of China will influence the development of artificial intelligence in Africa and, crucially, how the discourse around Africa-China relations augers a potentially new form of Orientalism.

Dovetail Labs Founder Alexa Hagerty writes about the need for community to overcome the pernicious impacts of technological insularity: "The solution isn't to turn off our phones; it's to develop social, economic and political structures that address deeper issues of disconnection.” Read more in the Pacific Standard.

Modern ethics discourse on artificial intelligence has tended to focus on rather constrained categories of harms. Specifically, it tends to focus on mistakes and accidents. In doing so, this discourse focuses on the immediate uses of AI and neglects to consider the structural risks of AI. AI research could benefit from forms of institutional review and take social science expertise into account.