Roughly a year ago, the cit­izens' coun­cil "AI and Free­dom" met and exchanged views on the role soci­ety could play in AI-research and the sup­port of it. Addi­tion­ally, they dis­cussed the way AI influ­ences our indi­vidu­al and soci­et­al free­dom.

To the RHET AI Cen­ter and espe­cially the Unit 4 (Pub­lic Engage­ment, respons­ible for the idea and organ­isa­tion of the cit­izens' coun­cil "AI and Free­dom"), this coun­cil was an import­ant pro­ject, not only in its exe­cu­tion but also in its pre­par­a­tion and the sub­sequent debriefings.

We inter­viewed a few col­leagues who were involved in vari­ous ways in the ini­tial idea and later exe­cu­tion of the cit­izens' coun­cil about their exper­i­ences regard­ing the pro­ject. By answer­ing 3 ques­tions, they are allow­ing us a glimpse into one cent­ral top­ic each which encap­su­lated them dur­ing the pro­cess, based on their expert­ise and their learn­ings fol­low­ing the course of the pro­ject as well.

Patrick Klü­gel (RHET AI Cen­ter Unit 4, Pub­lic Engage­ment Man­ager at the Uni­ver­sity of Tübin­gen) is the first to answer our ques­tions regard­ing man­age­ment of expect­a­tions. In the fol­low­ing weeks, Anika Kais­er (RHET AI Cen­ter Unit 4) will be inter­viewed on the top­ic of epi­stem­ic injustice and Oliv­er Häußler (Uni­ver­sity Com­mu­nic­a­tions Uni­ver­sity of Tübin­gen) is going to give us an insight into the com­mu­nic­a­tion con­cern­ing the cit­izens' council.

---

Interview with Patrick Klügel

The indi­vidu­al expect­a­tions of par­ti­cipants can dif­fer from what the format may be able to actu­ally offer. Moreover, views can change dur­ing the course of the coun­cil. We asked Patrick Klü­gel about these topics:

To what extent do mem­bers of the cit­izens' coun­cil view them­selves to be in a pos­i­tion of influ­ence on polit­ic­al decision-mak­ing?

Patrick Klü­gel: The cit­izens' coun­cil has neither a man­date nor a claim to dir­ectly influ­ence on polit­ic­al decision-mak­ing. One could rather say, it was estab­lished as an 'inspir­ing com­mit­tee' to enrich soci­et­al – and of course also polit­ic­al – dis­course through socially robust, sci­en­tific­ally informed recom­mend­a­tions. How­ever, a few of the drawn mem­bers did indeed devel­op  polit­ic­al self-con­fid­ence through­out the pro­cess. Some of them act as speak­ers of the coun­cil and rep­res­ent the recom­mend­a­tions pub­licly. Oth­ers inde­pend­ently met with the may­or of their muni­cip­al­ity to report on the coun­cil. I would there­fore describe it as the mem­bers recog­nising new pos­sib­il­it­ies fol­low­ing their respons­ib­il­ity in the council.

How did you exper­i­ence the man­age­ment of expect­a­tions regard­ing impact and influ­ence on polit­ic­al decision-mak­ing while over­see­ing the cit­izens' coun­cil "AI and Free­dom"?

Patrick Klü­gel: Expect­a­tion man­age­ment is always a dif­fi­cult bal­an­cing-act with these kinds of pro­jects: on one hand, for­ums with drawn coun­cils base their legit­im­isa­tion and appeal par­tially on the idea of giv­ing people without polit­ic­al man­dates a spe­cial engage­ment-oppor­tun­ity. But on the oth­er hand, our cit­izens' coun­cil did not have a polit­ic­al assign­ment. It wasn't about sup­port­ing a legis­lat­ive pro­cess or a spe­cif­ic polit­ic­al decision with a recom­mend­a­tion. From a par­ti­cip­a­tions-eth­ics view, the chal­lenge lied in mak­ing it clear that while the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence of Baden-Württem­berg did have an open ear for us, none of the developed recom­mend­a­tions would just be set into prac­tice. This is an import­ant demo­crat­ic exper­i­ence, too: to cre­ate impact through the shap­ing of dis­course is exhaust­ing, tedi­ous and the res­ult is com­pletely undetermined.

Look­ing back on the exper­i­ences gained from the cit­izens' coun­cil "AI and Free­dom", what would you organ­ise dif­fer­ently this time?

Patrick Klü­gel: I pre­sume that every coun­cil-pro­ject is so unique in its pre­requis­ites, require­ments and course that it becomes dif­fi­cult to fol­low a cer­tain scheme. To us, it was very import­ant to be able to make inter­est­ing obser­va­tions regard­ing our hypo­thes­is on epi­stem­ic injustices dur­ing the course of know­ledge-based delib­er­a­tion-pro­ced­ures. If I were to organ­ise any future cit­izens' coun­cils, I would there­fore like to devel­op and try out oth­er formats and com­mu­nic­at­ive meth­ods con­cern­ing 'empower­ment' and the activ­a­tion and reflec­tion of 'know­ledge'.

The stu­dent edit­or­i­al team thanks Patrick Klü­gel for this excit­ing glimpse into his exper­i­ences and is excited to already announce the next inter­view of this series: we asked Anika Kais­er (RHET AI Cen­ter Unit 4) about the top­ic of epi­stem­ic injustices.

Here you can find the oth­er inter­views in this series:

• Anika Kais­er (RHET AI Cen­ter, Unit 4)
  Click here for the interview.
• Inter­view mit Oliv­er Häußler (Zen­trum für Medi­en­kom­pet­enz, Uni Tübin­gen)
  Click here for the interview.