Research

Find out more about our interdisciplinary research on the digital good from the Digital Good Research Fund, our management team, associate researchers, postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, and our interns and fellows. These projects will all feed into the Digital Good Index, a set of tools to evaluate whether digital technologies have good societal outcomes.

Year

Public Voices in AI

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The Public Voices in AI project aimed to ensure that public voices are front and centre in artificial intelligence research, development and policy. It ran from March 2024 to March 2025 and was funded by a £850,000 grant from UKRI, as part of its £36m investment in responsible and trustworthy AI.

Read the Public Voices in AI project outputs.

About the project

Digital Good Network Director, Helen Kennedy, and Associate Director, Ros Williams, led the project, with our Policy and Public Engagement Lead, Reema Patel, and Senior Associate Researcher, Susan Oman, leading aspects of the work. Project collaborators included the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Alan Turing Institute and University College London.

A central aspect of responsible AI is ensuring that it takes account of public hopes, concerns and experiences. As concern about the societal impacts of AI grows and pressure for its effective regulation mounts, understanding and anticipating societal needs and values can inform responsible AI developments and deployments. Yet public voice is frequently missing from conversations about AI, an absence which inhibits progress in RAI. Addressing this gap is essential to enable ‘good AI’ – that is, AI Research, Development and Production which maximises benefits, prevent harms and ensures that AI works for everyone.

Public Voices in AI therefore put those most impacted and underrepresented front and centre. Susan Oman led an evidence review which goes beyond traditional methods which tend to validate certain knowledges and invalidate others, legitimising knowledge which has already been legitimated, and excluding knowledge from certain actors. Working with postdoctoral researcher Sara Cannizzaro, this work included criteria that centre equity and inclusion. Reema Patel led work to ensure that equity and inclusion were embedded across all project work, as well as synthesising this work into an AI participation framework, building on her prior work on participatory data stewardship and the outcomes of this project.

Another way Public Voices in AI centred underrepresented groups was by distributing up to £195,000 of its funding to support participatory projects with negatively affected or underrepresented groups. The Public Voices in AI Fund was launched on Friday 31 May 2024, with a closing date for applications of Wednesday 3 July 2024, at 5pm (UK time).

All of these aspects of the project align with the Digital Good Network’s equity societal challenge, through which we ask: how can we make sure digital technologies contribute towards a more equitable society?

You can read all of the Public Voices in AI project outputs here and on the RAI UK website, including an evidence database, an AI participation framework, original empirical research and methodological resources to enable various stakeholders to include public voices in AI research, development and policy. There was also a small Flexible Fund, supporting qualitative, participatory research with people from negatively affected and underrepresented groups. Through these activities, the project aimed to ensure that members of the public, especially underrepresented groups, have more power in and inform AI research, development and policy.

Short-term objectives

There is increased understanding of public views and experiences of AI amongst AI researchers, developers and policy-makers, especially of how underrepresented groups are differentially impacted by AI and the subsequent need for equity-driven approaches.
There is increased understanding of the value of meaningful inclusion of public voice amongst beneficiary groups and increased methodological capacity to do so. AI researchers, developers and policy-makers are engaging more systematically with public voice research.
The programme has demonstrated good practice in how to engage underrepresented communities in developing, co-designing and producing AI public voice research.
People from underrepresented groups have participated in AI research, development and policy-making and in shaping this project.
Some members of the public, especially from underrepresented groups, have developed their capabilities to engage meaningfully in AI research, development and policy-making.

Longer-term desired impact

Public voice informs AI research, development and policy-making. There is more engagement from AI researchers, developers and policy-makers with people affected by AI technologies, and more public voice evidence cited in policy documentation and industry codes of practice.

The project ran from April 2024 to March 2025. An online launch event took place on 6 June 2024.

Public Voices in AI Fund

As part of Public Voices in AI, we ran a competitive call to distribute money to projects which seek to ensure that uses of AI are informed by the voices of communities underrepresented in or negatively impacted by AI.

We wanted to support projects that would developing new ways of engaging communities in dialogue about how AI is used and implemented, that might address the impacts of AI on underrepresented groups or which identify ways in which AI could be used to reduce discrimination and bias.

We funded four projects, led by organisations in the VCSE Sector that are led by or work with groups and people negatively affected by or underrepresented in AI.

You can read about the projects, led by The Workers’ Observatory, Migrants’ Rights Network, UNJUST CIC and The People Speak CIC, here.

Team

Helen Kennedy, Professor of Digital Society, University of Sheffield. Director of the Digital Good Network.
Ros Williams, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society, University of Sheffield. Associate Director of the Digital Good Network.
Reema Patel, Elgon Social Research & the Digital Good Network.
Susan Oman, Senior Lecturer in Data, AI and Society, AI and In/equalities Lead, Centre for Machine Intelligence & Senior Researcher at the Digital Good Network, University of Sheffield
Helen Margetts, Professor of Society and the Internet at the University of Oxford and Director, Public Policy Programme, Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and AI.
Octavia Field Reid, Associate Director, Public Participation & Research Practice, Ada Lovelace Institute.
Jack Stilgoe, Professor of Science and Technology Policy, Dept of Science & Technology Studies, UCL.
Florence Enock, Senior Research Associate, Alan Turing Institute.
Ellie O'Keefe, Public Participation & Research Practice Lead, Ada Lovelace Institute
Roshni Modhvadia, Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute.
Mhairi Aitken, Senior Ethics Fellow, Alan Turing Institute.
Cian O’Donovan, Director, UCL Centre for Responsible Innovation, University College London
Tvesha Sippy, Researcher, Alan Turing Institute.
Sabeehah Mahomed, Researcher, Alan Turing Institute.
Sara Cannizzaro, Postdoctoral Researcher for the Public Voices in AI project.
Smera Jayadeva, Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute
Ruth Lauener, Manager, Digital Good Network, University of Sheffield.
Sarah Givans, Research Support Project Administrator, University of Sheffield/Digital Good Network.

Project collaborators include the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Alan Turing Institute, Elgon Social Research and University College London.

Public Voices in AI is advised by the Public Voices in AI People’s Advisory Panel, convened by Connected by Data. It is also advised by a Steering Group comprising Diane Beddoes, Sciencewise (Chair); Ewa Luger, University of Edinburgh; Aunam Quyoum, University of Glasgow; Al Mathers, Young Foundation; and Jenny McEneaney, Local Government Association).

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