Integrating feminist theories into design: the case of participatory Artificial Intelligence.

The integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence in most domains where design operates, make them a central locus of reflection for designers and may offer the opportunity to use the eco-feminist lens to expand the boundaries of intervention. Feminist perspectives on AI are raising the issues of material and labour exploitation in the production of AI systems, and discrimination and victimisation in the consequences of their application (Eubanks, 2018). While AI is being hailed as a potential avenue for addressing the climate crisis, feminist scholars are joining their voices to those of other critics who are raising concerns about the devastating material costs in terms of energy and water consumption involved in running these systems (Crawford, 2021); on the indiscriminate appropriation of data produced by humans for private profit (Couldry and Mejas, 2019) and the risks of profound injustice in the application of algorith-mic models in decision-making processes that concern people’s lives (Hildebrandt, 2021).Viewed from any perspective, AI technologies in their current mode of development seem to be predicated and entrenched in a logic of exploitation, and as eco-feminist scholars argue, are the product of a worldview in which extraction of value can come at the expense of certain natural categories. However, alternative approaches are emerging which centre on ideas of participatory AI, democratic AI and distributed AI. These are all attempts to bring AI into spaces of public governance and democratic values, and to anchor the impact of potential benefits emerging from these technologies to the construc-tion of common goods. They also are directions that fully resonate with social innovation models while offering frameworks that would allow practices to progress towards more systemic transformations.