MAP 1.2 - Inter-disciplinary AI Stakeholders

NIST AI RMF (in the playbook companion) states:

MAP 1.2

Inter-disciplinary AI actors, competencies, skills and capacities for establishing context reflect demographic diversity and broad domain and user experience expertise, and their participation is documented. Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration are prioritized.

About

Successfully mapping context requires a team of AI actors with a diversity of experience, expertise, abilities and backgrounds, and with the resources and independence to engage in critical inquiry.

Having a diverse team contributes to more open sharing of ideas and assumptions about the purpose and function of the technology being designed and developed – making these implicit aspects more explicit. The benefit of a diverse staff in managing AI risks is not the beliefs or presumed beliefs of individual workers, but the behavior that results from a collective perspective. An environment which fosters critical inquiry creates opportunities to surface problems and identify existing and emergent risks.

Actions
  • Establish interdisciplinary teams to reflect a wide range of skills, competencies, and capacity for AI efforts. Verify that team membership includes both demographic diversity, broad domain expertise, and lived experiences. Document team composition.

  • Create and empower interdisciplinary expert teams to capture, learn, and engage the interdependencies of deployed AI systems and related terminologies and concepts from disciplines outside of AI practice such as law, sociology, psychology, anthropology, public policy, systems design, and engineering.

Transparency and Documentation

Organizations can document the following:

  • To what extent do the teams responsible for developing and maintaining the AI system reflect diverse opinions, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives?

  • Did the entity document the demographics of those involved in the design and development of the AI system to capture and communicate potential biases inherent to the development process, according to forum participants?

  • What specific perspectives did stakeholders share, and how were they integrated across the design, development, deployment, assessment, and monitoring of the AI system?

  • To what extent has the entity addressed stakeholder perspectives on the potential negative impacts of the AI system on end users and impacted populations?

  • What type of information is accessible on the design, operations, and limitations of the AI system to external stakeholders, including end users, consumers, regulators, and individuals impacted by use of the AI system?

  • Did your organization address usability problems and test whether user interfaces served their intended purposes? Consulting the community or end users at the earliest stages of development to ensure there is transparency on the technology used and how it is deployed.

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