Power, Equity, and Building Better Robots

摘要

As HRI researchers, designers, and developers we need to reflect on the ways that power pervades the social contexts we're designing for and in. What can we do, with the power we have as designers, to produce more equitable HRI? What does it mean to talk about power and equity in the context of HRI? First, we need to define what we mean by power. I find D'Ignazio and Klein's framing a really useful one, specifically because it links the concept of power to system design: "We use the term power to describe the current configuration of structural privilege and structural oppression, in which some groups experience unearned advantages-because various systems have been designed by people like them and work for people like them-and other groups experience systematic disadvantages - because those same systems were not designed by them or with people like them in mind" 1.