Whose guinea-pig are you? Governing digital experimentation

Today we are all experimental subjects. Digitisation has brought with it new and pervasive practices of research and experimentation, through the online and physical spaces we inhabit, the devices we use and our digital interactions with each other, with businesses and with the state. Since the establishment of modern codes of research ethics after the Second World War, research and experimentation on human subjects have been governed according to a model originating in medical research, which is clearly bounded and defined, with goals set in advance, and which takes place in the context of professional and disciplinary standards. However, digitisation and the coming of a new evolution of AI technologies have changed this paradigm in fundamental ways. Continuous testing and experimentation with digital systems and interventions have become a feature of most societal domains. In some it is more visible, such as urban living labs and migration and asylum processes. In others it is less so, including behavioural economics used in public policy and business, social welfare programs, and humanitarian action. How should these forms of digitally facilitated experimentation be governed, by whom, and according to what precepts?

Programme