Participatory AI & Social Justice

Conference Paper (2026)
Author(s)

Maria Luce Lupetti (Politecnico di Torino)

Christina Harrington (Google LLC)

Massimo Menichinelli (Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona)

Cristina Zaga (University of Twente)

Laura Forlano (Northeastern University)

Alessandro Bozzon (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)

Q. Vera Liao (University of Michigan)

Department
Sustainable Design Engineering
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3790077 Final published version
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2026
Language
English
Department
Sustainable Design Engineering
Article number
991
Publisher
ACM
ISBN (electronic)
9798400722813
Event
2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2026 (2026-04-13 - 2026-04-17), Barcelona, Spain
Downloads counter
24
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies are increasingly integrated into a variety of products and services. However, AI promises often fall short and unintended consequences multiply, causing a negative impact, especially on marginalised communities. In response, Participatory AI has emerged as a promising method to account for the consequences on people subject to AI and to help develop systems that are better aligned with societal values. Yet meaningful participation remains difficult to achieve. Participation tends to be short-term and consultative, or even a mask for hidden labour. Moreover, the aim of building knowledge that is situated and subjective often conflicts with the global scale and generalizability of AI, especially when it comes to foundational models. This panel unites experts to explore how to account for these issues, and more specifically, to collectively draw a picture of the limits of Participatory AI in terms of social justice.