Participatory Modelling and Simulation to Improve AI-based Public Social Services : Scientific Advice for Policy and Practice

This open access volume showcases a series of models - particularly agent-based simulations - that explore pressing issues on national policy agendas, engaging with frontier questions around artificial intelligence (AI), welfare-related social assessment, and value diversity. These themes have profound implications for policy, cultural and societal life. The volume underscores the role of policy modelling in addressing how AI can be made context-specific, adaptive, and responsive within the public sector. Drawing on case studies from nine countries with differing value frameworks, the models examine welfare service provision choices and assess the demands, limitations, and effects of using AI to augment or replace traditional practices. The analyses reflect the pluralism of societal norms and values, while also considering the political, economic, and social pressures that shape them. The volume advocates for a participatory methodology and socio-technical infrastructure that can enable the development of more responsible, value-sensitive, and context-aware AI, and policies to implement it. By situating AI research, innovation and policy in close collaboration with society, it offers a fresh perspective for industry and innovation leaders. Ultimately, it presents a model for how participatory design and responsible technology production can better meet societal needs.

Petra Ahrweiler (Prof, Dr) is Full Professor of Sociology of Technology and Innovation, Social Simulation, at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She was on lien until 2017 to work as Director and CEO at the EA European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany. Previously, she was Full Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at Michael Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin, Ireland, and Director of its Innovation Research Unit. She was also a research fellow of the Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She started her professional career by studying social sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. At the Free University Berlin, Germany, she received her PhD for a study on artificial intelligence, and got her habilitation at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, for a study on simulation in Science and Technology Studies. Petra won various research prizes, has long experience in coordinating and completing international, mostly European research projects, publishes inter-disciplinarily in international journals, and has been awarded fellowships of various scientific societies such as the German Academy of Technical Sciences (acatech), and AcademiaNet, the network of excellent female scientists in Germany.

Nigel Gilbert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey UK. He is the Director of the ESRC-funded Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN), which develops and tests methods for the evaluation of complex public policies.  A common feature of almost all the projects in which he has been involved is that they are multi-disciplinary and collaborative, bringing together social scientists, public sector and civil society organisations. He is a recognised expert in computational social science with a background in engineering. He was one of the first to use agent-based models in the social sciences, in the early 1990s, and has since published widely on the methodology underlying computer modelling, and on the application of simulation, system dynamics and artificial intelligence for applied and policy related problems such as understanding commercial innovation, managing environmental resources such as energy and water, and supporting public policy decision-making. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2016 for services to engineering and the social sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences, the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of Arts. Gilbert was a Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Surrey for eight years and now has a Distinguished Chair there.  He has been on the Board of Directors of three start-up companies and has founded two successful academic journals. He is also the founder and Director of CECAN Ltd, a spin-off from the research centre.