From Stem to Stern: Contestability Along AI Value Chains
Agathe Balayn, Yulu Pi, David Gray Widder, Kars Alfrink, Mireia Yurrita, Sohini Upadhyay, Naveena Karusala, Henrietta Lyons, Cagatay Turkay, Christelle Tessono, Blair Attard-Frost, Ujwal Gadiraju
TL;DR
The paper addresses the need to study contestable AI across the full AI value chain, emphasizing governance, design, and sociotechnical dimensions. It proposes a workshop-driven approach to synthesize opportunities and challenges into a long-range research roadmap, leveraging site-specific and transversal discussions (GA1–GA3) and empirical case studies. The contribution lies in a concrete, interdisciplinary workshop design aimed at mapping contestability along value-chain sites, generating actionable insights, and producing a CACM roadmap for the next decade. The practical impact is to catalyze cross-disciplinary collaboration, inform AI governance and policy, and guide future research and design practices toward more contestable AI systems.
Abstract
This workshop will grow and consolidate a community of interdisciplinary CSCW researchers focusing on the topic of contestable AI. As an outcome of the workshop, we will synthesize the most pressing opportunities and challenges for contestability along AI value chains in the form of a research roadmap. This roadmap will help shape and inspire imminent work in this field. Considering the length and depth of AI value chains, it will especially spur discussions around the contestability of AI systems along various sites of such chains. The workshop will serve as a platform for dialogue and demonstrations of concrete, successful, and unsuccessful examples of AI systems that (could or should) have been contested, to identify requirements, obstacles, and opportunities for designing and deploying contestable AI in various contexts. This will be held primarily as an in-person workshop, with some hybrid accommodation. The day will consist of individual presentations and group activities to stimulate ideation and inspire broad reflections on the field of contestable AI. Our aim is to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue by bringing together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders to foster the design and deployment of contestable AI.