- o r a m a: CRAFT: Critiquing and Rethinking Accountability, Fairness and Transparency / Call for contributions

9.9.19

CRAFT: Critiquing and Rethinking Accountability, Fairness and Transparency / Call for contributions

Call for Contributions (Panels, Workshops, Debates, Unconferences, ...)

29/30. January, 2020

Barcelona, Spain

The ACM FAT* conference has predominantly focused on fairness, accountability, and transparency. The success of the field of fairness, accountability, and transparency has also attracted much critique and renewed attention to the limitations of achieving these goals in systems that implement statistical, machine learning, optimization, or autonomous computing techniques. A number of prominent studies acknowledge that addressing societal problems embedded in such computing systems may require more holistic approaches.

In the spirit of reflection and response, we invite academics of all disciplines and people representing different communities of practice (including journalism, advocacy, organizing, education, art, public authorities) to contribute to a program that will be subject to its own review process and that will be embedded in the ACM FAT* conference (the CRAFT call is very much inspired by the NeurIPS 2018 CRACT workshop.) This call invites contributions to that program in the form of workshops, panels, and other formats to:

- address critiques of the field of fairness, accountability, and transparency, such as its blind spots,omissions, or alternative possibilities that take a more holistic approach,

- open future lines of research, collaboration, and practice.

In addition to contributions that explore the problem space in greater depth and from broader perspectives, we particularly encourage proposals that explore solution spaces, indicate mechanisms for positive change, or open possibilities for a greater conversation around countering automated injustices. We value proposals focused on interaction among participants, and we look forward to formats that allow participants to explore starting assumptions, prior experiences, or competing values and to foster community building, shared knowledge production, and future engagement.

Please note that CRAFT emphasizes reflection and critique and differs in important and subtle ways from Tutorials. By offering contributors a space to address blind spots and omissions, offer alternative approaches, and open new possibilities for the field, CRAFT seeks contributions that challenge. By contrast, Tutorials primarily educate and inform. We expect that CRAFT will feature unconventional ideas in engaging and diverse formats. Tutorials, by contrast, might include explainers regarding existing tools, overviews of bodies of literature, or best practices. Some proposals we receive under the CRAFT program may be more appropriate as proposals for Tutorials track, and vice-versa. In such cases, the Tutorial and CRAFT Co-chairs may transfer such proposals to the other program, in consultation with Coordinator(s). In the event that a CRAFT decision suggests your proposal for the Tutorials section of the ACM FAT* 2020 program, you will have one week to confirm whether you accept this choice.

Themes

Theme 1: Modeling and (Non-)Deployment

Theme 2: Values, Assumptions and Context

Theme 3: Generating Higher Order Critiques

Theme 4: Emerging Problems

For further details of the themes, submission guidelines and dates please visit: https://fatconference.org/2020/callforcraft.html

Please contact craft@fatconference.org for any questions.

CRAFT Co-Chairs

Seda Guerses, TU Delft

Seeta Peña Gangadharan, London School of Economics

Suresh Venkatasubramanian, U. Utah

Selection committee: