Exploring AI Futures Through Role Play
This addresses the need for AI developers and policy professionals to prepare for social and ethical challenges, though it is incremental as it builds on existing role play methods.
The paper tackles the problem of studying and teaching AI impacts by developing a role play game, which has been tested in over 30 events with 3-70 participants and shows promise for exploring AI futures and training individuals and organizations.
We present an innovative methodology for studying and teaching the impacts of AI through a role play game. The game serves two primary purposes: 1) training AI developers and AI policy professionals to reflect on and prepare for future social and ethical challenges related to AI and 2) exploring possible futures involving AI technology development, deployment, social impacts, and governance. While the game currently focuses on the inter relations between short --, mid and long term impacts of AI, it has potential to be adapted for a broad range of scenarios, exploring in greater depths issues of AI policy research and affording training within organizations. The game presented here has undergone two years of development and has been tested through over 30 events involving between 3 and 70 participants. The game is under active development, but preliminary findings suggest that role play is a promising methodology for both exploring AI futures and training individuals and organizations in thinking about, and reflecting on, the impacts of AI and strategic mistakes that can be avoided today.