Reciprocity Deficits: Observing AI in the street with everyday publics

Abstract

The street has emerged as a primary site where publics are confronted with AI as an everyday reality. AI-based systems are now commonly deployed in this setting in the form of automated cars, facial recognition, smart billboards and the like. While this use of AI in the street has attracted significant media attention and public controversy, such deployments often remain inscrutable, and everyday publics are often unaware of their presence. We report on participatory engagements with AI in the situated environment of city streets under these paradoxical conditions. Combining approaches from social and cultural studies of AI, design research and Science and Technology Studies (STS), we engage with the street as a site for ‘material participation’ in AI through what we call everyday AI observatories. We narrate and reflect on participatory interventions at these observatories, conducted in five cities in the UK and Australia, and highlight three ways of understanding AI that emerged from them: (1) the street as a transactional environment, (2) the designed invisibility of AI in the street, and (3) a perceived stratification of street environments through statistical governance. We conclude by reflecting on the reciprocity deficits observed between AI infrastructures and everyday publics in the street.