Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly evolving field encompassing a diverse range of technologies. While AI holds immense potential, it also carries risks of perpetuating existing societal inequalities. This paper argues for the crucial role of public voices in shaping the design, development and use of AI as a response to the challenges of inequality, exclusion and marginalisation. It takes a Foucauldian lens, which defines marginalisation and exclusion itself explicitly as the lack of agency or voice, created by a confluence of rules that reinforce this process, and frames the ability to have that voice (discourse) itself as a site of struggle. Many individuals, groups and communities have historically experienced exclusion and as an extension of that exclusion, social control and the imperative towards ‘integration’, rather than belonging; particularly through the prism of technologies. The paper builds out from this work to set out three steps in developing strategies for the inclusion of diverse public voices in AI:
The first step is to shift from a "deficit model" where the public is seen as lacking knowledge to a "dialogue model" that increases their agency and power. Furthermore, we need to reframe the conversation so that it is the public who are the source of technologists’ legitimacy and agency (not in reverse). This will help ensure AI development is responsible and serves all of society.
The second step involves both reimagining new spaces, mechanisms and cultures for participation, as well as space for new forms of participation. This includes spaces that are accessible to marginalised communities and can be formal or informal, invited or uninvited, created or existing.
The third step is to centre the participation process on the needs and values of the communities most impacted by AI. This means, first, systematically understanding how we identify who is most impacted, and then secondly, empowering these communities to understand AI and the factors that have excluded them from shaping its development. Freire's concept of "praxis" is used to emphasise the importance of combining participation, action, and reflection for true empowerment.