Citizen-Centric AI Systems Workshop 2025

Sebastian Stein

At this workshop, we will discuss current and future research on citizen-centric artificial intelligence systems.

The Royal Society

<a href="https://ccais.ac.uk" title="https://ccais.ac.uk" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Citizen-centric artificial intelligence systems</a> (CCAIS) put the citizen end user of AI technology at their heart. They learn and understand the preferences of users, they offer incentives where appropriate and they provide explanations for their decisions. By earning the trust of users, citizen-centric AI systems promise to address important societal challenges within a range of application areas, including smart energy, smart transportation and disaster response. At Southampton, our team is researching such systems as part of a £1.4M UKRI-funded Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship.At this workshop, the CCAIS team will present their work and engage with attendees to discuss current and future challenges for building citizen-centric AI systems.The focus of this year's workshop is "Involving citizen end users in AI: From social benefit to sustainability". We will present recent work on involving end users in the design of future AI assistants and will discuss the findings with the workshop attendees.We are particularly delighted to confirm two guest speakers: Cathleen Berger from Bertelsmann Stiftung and Joel Z Leibo from Google DeepMind (see details below).Attendees will come from a range of backgrounds, including academia, industry, government and the third sector. They will work in areas and sectors that may use or may benefit from AI, but attendance is not restricted to those working directly on AI technologies.The workshop will take place on 30th January, from 9:30am to 5pm, at the Royal Society in central London. It will be an in-person event, but if you are interested in online participation, please email Seb Stein (ss2@ecs.soton.ac.uk).There will be an optional dinner after the workshop.Above are indicative timings for the event - a more detailed agenda will be added shortly.

<h3>Morning Invited Talk</h3> Speaker: <a href="https://cathleenberger.com/" title="https://cathleenberger.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Cathleen Berger</a>Title: The “AI Climate”: Hard facts, narratives, and governanceAbstract: The talk will start by introducing participants to AI’s environmental impact: how it is measured, what we know, and what we don’t know. We will then look at a recent pivot by large tech companies to decarbonise their supply chain by betting on nuclear energy. By following their arguments, we’ll assess their effect on public discourse and surface a series of open questions around public safety, oversight, and regulation.Bio: Cathleen Berger brings 15+ years of international, professional experience: She has worked across all sectors, academia, government, corporate, early-stage start-up, and non-profit. Her engagement and research focus on the intersection of digital technologies, sustainability, and social impact.She currently works with the Bertelsmann Stiftung as Co-Team Lead for Upgrade Democracy and Senior Expert on future technologies and sustainability. In addition, she occasionally advises and works with social purpose companies and organisations on their climate and social impact strategies.Previously, she directed the B Corporation certification process of a pre-seed climate tech start-up, launched and headed up Mozilla's environmental sustainability programme, worked within the International Cyber Policy Coordination Staff at the German Foreign Office, as a consultant with Global Partners Digital, a research assistant at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and a visiting lecturer at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.<h3> Afternoon Invited Talk</h3> Speaker: <a href="https://www.jzleibo.com/" title="https://www.jzleibo.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Joel Z Leibo</a>Title: A theory of appropriateness with applications to generative artificial intelligenceAbstract: What is appropriateness? Humans navigate a multi-scale mosaic of interlocking notions of what is appropriate for different situations. We act one way with our friends, another with our family, and yet another in the office. Likewise for AI, appropriate behavior for a comedy-writing assistant is not the same as appropriate behavior for a customer-service representative. What determines which actions are appropriate in which contexts? And what causes these standards to change over time? Since all judgments of AI appropriateness are ultimately made by humans, we need to understand how appropriateness guides human decision making in order to properly evaluate AI decision making and improve it. In this talk, I will present a theory of appropriateness: how it functions in human society, how it may be implemented in the brain, and what it means for responsible deployment of generative AI technology.Bio: Joel is a senior staff research scientist at Google DeepMind and visiting professor at King's College London. He obtained his PhD from MIT where he studied computational neuroscience and machine learning with Tomaso Poggio. Joel is interested in reverse engineering human biological and cultural evolution to inform the development of artificial intelligence that is simultaneously human-like and human-compatible. In particular, Joel believes that theories of cooperation from fields like cultural evolution and institutional economics can be fruitfully applied to inform the development of ethical and effective artificial intelligence technology.

Agenda (Tentative)

Registration

Citizen-Centric AI Research

Coffee and Posters

Invited Talk: The “AI Climate”: Hard facts, narratives, and governance

Discussion 1: AI Sustainability

Lunch

Invited Talk: A theory of appropriateness with applications to generative AI

Discussion 2: Envisioning Future AI Assistants with End Users

Panel Session: Building Trustworthy and Sustainable AI Systems

Wrap up

Networking

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