TY - UNPB
T1 - Participatory AI
T2 - A Scandinavian Approach to Human-Centered AI
AU - Elmqvist, Niklas
AU - Hoggan, Eve
AU - Schulz, Hans-Jörg
AU - Petersen, Marianne Graves
AU - Dalsgaard, Peter
AU - Assent, Ira
AU - Bertelsen, Olav W.
AU - Arora, Akhil
AU - Grønbæk, Kaj
AU - Bødker, Susanne
AU - Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted
AU - Smith, Rachel Charlotte
AU - Hubenschmid, Sebastian
AU - Johns, Christoph A.
AU - León, Gabriela Molina
AU - Wolter, Anton
AU - Ellemose, Johannes
AU - Dhanoa, Vaishali
AU - Enni, Simon Aagaard
AU - Lunding, Mille Skovhus
AU - Bilstrup, Karl-Emil Kjær
AU - Esquivel, Juan Sánchez
AU - Connelly, Luke
AU - Sarabia, Rafael Pablos
AU - Birk, Morten
AU - Nyborg, Joachim
AU - Zollmann, Stefanie
AU - Langlotz, Tobias
AU - Chou, Meredith Siang-Yun
AU - Grønbæk, Jens Emil Sloth
AU - Wessely, Michael
AU - Jiang, Yijing
AU - Berger, Caroline
AU - Dai, Duosi
AU - Biskjaer, Michael Mose
AU - Leiva, Germán
AU - Frich, Jonas
AU - Eriksson, Eva
AU - Halskov, Kim
AU - Mikkelsen, Thorbjørn
AU - Potamitis, Nearchos
AU - Yildirim, Michel
AU - Srinivasan, Arvind
AU - Falk, Jeanette
AU - Inie, Nanna
AU - Iversen, Ole Sejer
AU - Andersson, Hugo
N1 - 32 pages, 7 figures
PY - 2025/9/16
Y1 - 2025/9/16
N2 - AI's transformative impact on work, education, and everyday life makes it as much a political artifact as a technological one. Current AI models are opaque, centralized, and overly generic. The algorithmic automation they provide threatens human agency and democratic values in both workplaces and daily life. To confront such challenges, we turn to Scandinavian Participatory Design (PD), which was devised in the 1970s to face a similar threat from mechanical automation. In the PD tradition, technology is seen not just as an artifact, but as a locus of democracy. Drawing from this tradition, we propose Participatory AI as a PD approach to human-centered AI that applies five PD principles to four design challenges for algorithmic automation. We use concrete case studies to illustrate how to treat AI models less as proprietary products and more as shared socio-technical systems that enhance rather than diminish human agency, human dignity, and human values.
AB - AI's transformative impact on work, education, and everyday life makes it as much a political artifact as a technological one. Current AI models are opaque, centralized, and overly generic. The algorithmic automation they provide threatens human agency and democratic values in both workplaces and daily life. To confront such challenges, we turn to Scandinavian Participatory Design (PD), which was devised in the 1970s to face a similar threat from mechanical automation. In the PD tradition, technology is seen not just as an artifact, but as a locus of democracy. Drawing from this tradition, we propose Participatory AI as a PD approach to human-centered AI that applies five PD principles to four design challenges for algorithmic automation. We use concrete case studies to illustrate how to treat AI models less as proprietary products and more as shared socio-technical systems that enhance rather than diminish human agency, human dignity, and human values.
KW - cs.HC
KW - H.5.2; H.1.2
M3 - Preprint
BT - Participatory AI
PB - arxiv.org
ER -