World-class research based on a distinctive, interdisciplinary approach to the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and technology, and the arts and humanities.
The MU International Office is the first point of contact for international students applying for full-degree, Erasmus, Study Abroad, and Summer School programmes, and supports MU students who wish to study abroad.
I am currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow (MSCA GF) at Maynooth University (Ireland) and UFRGS (Brazil). I hold a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from UCLouvain (2017) and was formerly lecturer of Research Methodology at UCLouvain FUCaM Mons (Belgium) and Visiting Professor at UFPE (Brazil).
My MSCA project entitled "BehindAI – Building Responsible Technology: Global Digital Transformations, Tech Workers’ Agency and the Making of Artificial Intelligence" (EU Project ID: 101068828) is focusing on the relationship between technology and society – and more precisely on the agency and worldviews of tech workers, and the way they can contribute to a more responsible technological development.
Research Projects
Title
Role
Description
Start date
End date
Amount
BehindAI – Building Responsible Technology: Global Digital Transformations, Tech Workers’ Agency and the Making of Artificial Intelligence
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow
How could developers and deployers of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) make ‘social responsibility’ a key element in everyday industry practices and technological decisions?
To answer this question – at the core of the EU Digital Compass 2030 and the recent publication of the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI – BehindAI will open up the “algorithm black box” and deploy an innovative international action research in collaboration with ThoughtWorks, a major global technology and consultancy company spearheading innovative responsible tech initiatives.
Carrying out close studies of how decisions are taken during software design and development, the project will explain those decisions by understanding team members’ reflexive perspectives on tech and how those were shaped by their personal and professional trajectories. Furthermore, it will analyse concrete workplace organizational set-ups and the ways in which they allow or limit the application of those ethical and social perspectives in the everyday reality of the global tech industry.
As a MSCA Global Fellowship BehindAI will be carried out by Sébastien Antoine under the supervision of EU tech industry expert Seán Ó Riain and organized through a closely coordinated transnational team from Europe (Maynooth/Ireland), Latin America (UFRGS/Brazil), Asia (HK PolyU/China) and the US (UPenn/USA) with strong organic links between the academic and industry partners.
In this way, the project will provide a new perspective on how the socialization, learning and reflexive negotiation of tech developers can address critical ethical and social issues in AI. This will provide new directions for addressing both theoretical challenges and policy dilemmas currently being considered at the highest levels, ensuring that the key principles of ethical AI championed by the EU reach the shop floor of the tech industry, shaping concrete software developments and broader digitalization processes of economy and society.
01/04/2023
30/09/2026
Post Doctoral Fellows / Research Team
Researcher Name
Project
Funding Body
Sébastien Antoine
BehindAI – Building Responsible Technology: Global Digital Transformations, Tech Workers’ Agency and the Making of Artificial Intelligence
