[Petit Fours #426] On personal data flows, memory disorders, and trusting AI
Hi, everyone! In celebration of friends, colleagues, and family, here’s what I’ve got for you today:
#1 I was delighted to hear Heather Ford’s voice after many years. She also says some really thoughtful things in this podcast episode on How to Build AI Systems We can Trust.
#2 Alumna of our research group and researcher extraordinaire, Sylvaine Tuncer, is part of a team in London organising what promises to be an amazing summer school: WIT Advanced Summer Institute 2025 “is designed for advanced doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career faculty conducting video-based qualitative research on interactions and practices in workplaces and other settings. It provides intensive training in methodology, from study design to data collection, with a particular emphasis on data analysis. The taught methods and approach are based on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Plenary sessions will be dedicated to the following topics: introduction to the field, data collection methods and ethics, data analysis, applications, and preparing presentations.“
#3 I won’t be going to the CHI conference this year but many colleagues from Stockholm will be there. Among them, look out for Alejandra Gomez Ortega – the newest postdoc in our group – who will be presenting a paper on personal data flows: Surrendering to Powerlesness: Governing Personal Data Flows in Generative AI Here’s the abstract to give you a taste: “Personal data flows across digital technologies integrated into people's lives and relationships. Increasingly, these technologies include Generative AI. (How) should personal data flow into and out of GenAI models? We investigate how people experience personal data collection in GenAI ecosystems and unpack the enablers and barriers to governing their data. We focus on personal data collection by Meta, specifically Instagram, in line with their recent policy update on processing user data to train GenAI models. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 Latin American Instagram users, based in Europe and Latin America. We discussed the acceptability of their data flowing in and out of GenAI models through different scenarios. Our results interrogate power dynamics in data collection, the (inter)personal nature of data, and the multiple unknowns concerning data and their algorithmic derivatives. We pose provocations around feelings of powerlessness, reframing (inter)personal data, and encountering unknown data and algorithms through design.”
#4 Heikki Kemppainen’s graphic novel Hyvää yötä, äiti is a short yet compelling read about memory disorders and relationships between elderly people and their family members. Reading this made me think of my late grandmother, fondly.
-A