Hybrid Seminar: Feeling Bugged? Trust, ethics & privacy in the dawn of AI   

Seminar Abstract: Today’s global climate is riddled with complexity. Not only are our information systems advancing at exponential speeds, compounding their multifaceted, networked and dynamic nature, but our very socio-technical fabrics and understandings of e.g., business and or ethics are becoming profoundly confusing. Business has fast turned from goods and services producer to information trade. No longer are “snitches” from 1950s and 60s detective movies the sole profiteers of secrets. Rather, every detail of human life and identity now exists with a price tag. For this reason, privacy and its counter-part trust, have become highly valuable properties. In this presentation Rousi takes a cognitive-affective approach to understanding how trust, ethics and privacy operate on the individual and collective experiential levels. The presentation looks at the psycho-physiological and social reasons of why trust is an enabler in the coming AI-driven society.

When: Wednesday 14 June 2023, 2:00pm – 3:00pm Seminar / Q&A 

International Guest Speaker: Rebekah Rousi is an Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Economy at the University of Vaasa, Finland | OpenInnoTrain Secondee

Welcome and introduction: Professor Ingrid Richardson, Digital Media, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne

Rebekah’s Bio: Rebekah Rousi is a human-centered specialist who focuses on examining the relationship between human experience and technology design. Rousi obtained her PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, on the topic of user experience from a cognitive semiotic perspective. Rousi has worked in a number of projects focusing on a range of topics from embodied and multisensory user experience to digital literacy in the context of mental health. Rousi is currently Principal Investigator of an Academy of Finland project titled, “The emotional experience of privacy and ethics in everyday pervasive systems (BUGGED)” and leads the VME Interaction Design Environment for development and research of future human-technology interaction. Rousi’s research interests include embodied experience in human-robot interaction, human-AI interaction, posthumanism, trust, and ethics in data-driven systems.

Acknowledgements: OpenInnoTrain Project, is a global network of researchers and industry practitioners across Europe and Australia for promoting the translation of research between university-industry through cooperation and Open Innovation in the sectors of: FinTech, Industry 4.0, CleanTech, FoodTech. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 823971.

RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia – Global Business Innovation Enabling Impact Platform (Director, Professor Anne-Laure Mention).

University of Vaasa

Reflection post event:

In this seminar, Associate Professor Rebekah Rousi shared her research which takes a cognitive-affective approach to understanding how trust, ethics and privacy operate on the individual and collective experiential levels, and investigates the psycho-physiological and social reasons of why trust is an enabler in the coming AI-driven society.

Rousi says we live in a world where we need to rely on information technology that is not necessarily reliable. We’re somewhat aware that technology is watching us while also manipulating the information we’re giving it and it is giving us. Within this context, the question driving Rousi’s project, Bugged (Emotional Experience of Privacy, Ethics and Cyber Security in Everyday Pervasive Systems), is how do people psycho-physiologically experience privacy in relation to the ethics of everyday pervasive technological systems?

While trust is required in order to rely on a piece of technology, Rousi shared that we are becoming less likely to trust through factors like deep fakes, misinformation and disinformation. These factors which manipulate and destroy trust lead to increased stress which, when experienced over an extended period of time, can also generate anxiety disorders, depression, and potentially suicide.

Further takeaways from the seminar included:

• Trust is a pre-condition, cognitive and emotional state, and defines the relationship between a person in relation to phenomena. It is vital in determining how people think, prepare, and act. 
• Embodied trust, over trust and human trust are central factors in human-cyber relationships.
• The recognition of privacy concerns and conceptualisation of privacy threats requires higher order processing.
• Trust can be linked to intentional motives and intentionality.