Full project title: The Digital Good Network: exploring equity, sustainability and resilience in people’s relationships with and through digital technologies
Digital technologies are not always good for societies. Across research, policy, industry and civil society, how to define, measure and build good digital societies needs urgent attention. The digital good is ill-defined and contested, and the resulting lack of consensus can harmful. For example, algorithmic decision-making can introduce bias under the guise of fairness; policies designed to make social media safer are experienced by users as doing the opposite. DGN will generate new insights into the interconnections between power, behaviours and practices by focusing on three societal challenges that are crucial to envisioning good relationships with and through digital technologies: equity, sustainability and resilience.
DGN will generate new insights into the interconnections between power, behaviours and practices by focusing on three societal challenges that are crucial to envisioning good relationships with and through digital technologies: equity, sustainability and resilience.
DGN bridges disciplines and institutions and is global in outlook.
It is led by transdisciplinary researchers at different career stages and partners from policy, industry, community and cultural sectors.
DGN will:
Ultimately, DGN will lead to a step-change in enabling societies to realise the digital good.
This project aims to understand the digital good people want when using generative AI on messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram, paying special attention to diverse global perspectives.
While most people’s first encounters with Generative AI (GenAI) are on a dedicated platform like ChatGPT, this technology is increasingly being embedded into other applications, and there has been an explosion of interest in AI agents. Private messaging apps are a natural candidate for such integrations, and Meta AI is already available on WhatsApp in many countries outside the European Union. If rolled out to all countries, this would put GenAI at the fingertips of nearly 3 billion people—far more than ChatGPT’s estimated 350 million monthly active users. Civil society organizations like fact-checkers and journalists are also building chatbots to connect with their audiences on messaging apps.
However, little is known about the actual preferences of users regarding this specific implementation of GenAI. What specific tasks and uses do people have for AI on messaging apps? What behaviours and styles do they want AI agents to have? How do preferences and uses vary with demographics and other factors?
Furthermore, our past research shows much AI is fine-tuned by small, non-representative groups of individuals (Kirk et al., 2023). When more individuals participate, it is often unknowingly when their data is harvested from social media sites. The result is inequitable technologies that cater to a small wealthy subset of the global population. Funded by the Digital Good Network, we aim to understand what digital good people want out of the use of GenAI on private messaging apps, paying special attention to include groups that are traditionally marginalized from these discussions.
Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Project role: Principal Investigator
Dr Scott A. Hale is an Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow, and Turing Fellow. He develops and applies computer science techniques to the social sciences focusing on increasing equitable access to quality information.
Research Assistant
Project role: Research Assistant
Julia is a Research Assistant for the Digital Good Network, where she is researching the digital good people want when using generative AI on private messaging apps.
