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Table of Contents

Next: Global Task Force Member Biographies

History & Purpose

• The Global Task Force for Inclusive AI was convened in 2023 to address the challenges of conducting meaningful stakeholder engagement as a part of AI development and deployment. The rapid pace of AI development and the growing ubiquity of AI-driven technology in our everyday lives makes it more important than ever that we ensure that the technology does not harm people or put them at risk of discrimination or other forms of inequality.
• The technology gap continues to grow - from who has access to these digital tools and benefits to who is free from algorithmically-driven harm. The involvement of users, consumers, workers, and the general public - particularly those of socially marginalized communities - has been noted as a necessary step for responsible AI development. Over the past several years, a number of studies and frameworks have been published to help AI practitioners understand the role of stakeholder engagement practices in the development of AI systems and features.
• The aim of the Global Task Force for Inclusive AI is to build upon this existing corpus to translate them into actionable practices that can be adopted by AI developing teams and organizations more readily.
• As a multi-sector body, the Global Task Force is attuned to both the aspirations of community-based advocates who seek a greater voice in the development of AI systems and the very real barriers and obstacles facing industry-based practitioners who want to build technology responsibly.
• As a first step, the Global Task Force applied its combined decades of experience with technology development, community engagement and advocacy, and community-based research to draft a set of guidelines and guardrails to support mutually beneficial interactions between technology companies and socially marginalized communities.

Overview of Members

• Global Task Force members were selected based on their long-standing and active work on the subject of participatory engagement practices within corporate/commercial settings, whether as practitioners working within these types of organizations to develop procedures and resources for commercial AI developers or as academic researchers and community advocates who have interacted with corporate AI developers to enhance stakeholder community voices in the development lifecycle.
  • While Global Task Force members’ experience and knowledge includes the context of the companies and organizations where they work, their views in informing these guidelines are their own and do not necessarily represent official corporate or organizational views or commitments.
• The criteria for invited members who currently work within corporate entities include:
  • that they worked on established and well-resourced teams focused on responsible, participatory engagement practices on behalf of the company
  • There is evidence the company has made multi-year commitments to researching and developing more ethical practices for working with socially marginalized communities.
• To best ensure that the Global Task Force could provide recommendations based on practices that have been attempted or experimented with in corporate settings, individuals working in corporate settings that have nascent responsible AI teams or participatory engagement teams were not included.
• Academic researchers and civil society advocates were selected based on their work, which not only offers thoughtful critique of existing practices, but actively pursues the development of proactive alternative approaches and processes. Similarly to Task Force members from the corporate sector, members from academia and civil society were selected based on their experience with implementing stakeholder engagement strategies.
• As this resource is meant to provide guidance to AI practitioners in corporate-settings on best practices for cultivating ethical, mutually-beneficial working relationships with socially marginalized communities in order to solicit insights and inputs for their AI development projects, it is important to identify gaps in the Task Force’s knowledge and experience so those gaps may be actively addressed.
  • The majority of the Task Force members are based in the United States or the United Kingdom and work for organizations or entities that are headquartered in the United States or the United Kingdom. A majority of Task Force members have advanced degrees (Master’s or Doctorates) in fields like Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, the social sciences from highly-ranked Western universities.
• As professionals working at the intersection of society and technology, Task Force members are largely able to live and do their work without frequent and direct threat to their well-being or safety due to their identities and backgrounds. (Certain members of the Task Force are, however, working with high-risk safety settings and pseudonymously due to the context of their background and work.) The majority of Task Force members are currently situated in the United States or the United Kingdom - and many in major, somewhat affluent metropolitan areas.
• They also have the privilege of being able to dedicate themselves and their time to these topics while being compensated above a living wage. Task Force members have committed a significant part of their professional career to becoming experts on different facets of AI and other forms of digital technology development and are relatively at-ease engaging in highly technical and socio-technical discussions. While knowledgeable and opinionated about their own experiences with technology and the potential impact on their community (broader society), those targeted for stakeholder engagement efforts may not initially experience the same degree of self-assurance to engage in these discussions. Many of the socially marginalized communities targeted for stakeholder engagement efforts may not experience the availability of time or financial trade-offs to participate in these kinds of exercises.
• However, a majority of the Task Members individually identify as a member of socially marginalized groups (e.g., socio-politically marginalized due to ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability) and their work is in active partnership with their communities. Task Force Members bring in both lived experience and learned expertise on: accessibility/disability, ethnicity (within and outside of the US), colonialism, gender expression, immigration status/nationality, indigeneity, language (non-English), race (within and outside of the US), religion, rural access, sexual orientation/queerness, socioeconomic class, sociotechnical issues, and technical development.
  • Please see the next page for more detailed biographies of Global Task Force members and Partnership on AI Staff involved with this resource.