🏳️‍🌈 Ashwin (they/them)

Hello! I am an activist-researcher based in Barcelona, Catalunya. My work derives from algorithmic fairness and theories of participation to make socio-technical systems equitable.

My research has won the Best Paper Award 🏆 at FAccT, and been published in {A*, A} conferences including AIES, Hypertext, ICTD, INTERACT + more.

I am currently pursuing my MSc. at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and building the next-gen recommender systems for travel experiences at Headout.

I am also a part of the Web Science and Social Computing Research Group, working under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Castillo towards my MSc. thesis.

Email / CV / Google Scholar / Twitter / Github

📰 Updates

October 2023: I had the honor of giving a keynote talk at Decidim Fest 2023 on lessons, opportunities and challenges for participation in ~~artificial~~ collective intelligence. Video / Slides / Testimonials: LinkedIn, Twitter / Interview.
May 2023: Our work titled Bound by the Bounty: Collaboratively Shaping Evaluation Processes for Queer AI Harms got accepted as a full paper at ACM/AAAI AIES 2023.
April 2023: Our work titled Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI ~~got accepted as a full paper~~ won the Best Paper Award 🏆 at ACM FAccT 2023.
March 2023: Gave my first keynote talk on participatory methods in AI at Inclusive HRI Workshop, ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2023 (A*) held in Stockholm, Sweden. Slides / Testimonial
June 2022: Received ACM SIGWEB Travel Grant ($1400) and ACM SIGCHI Registration Grant (€650) to attend ACM Hypertext 2022 in Barcelona, Spain.

🔬 Research

	Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI Ashwin S, Organizers of QueerInAI ACM FAccT, 2023 \| 📍 Chicago, USA Paper / Slides 🏆 Best Paper Award Critically examining how participatory design and intersectional tenets started and shaped QueerInAI's programs during the last five years, this work outlines lessons, opportunities and challenges for practitioners and theorists of participatory methods.
	Bound by the Bounty: Collaboratively Shaping Evaluation Processes for Queer AI Harms N Dennler, A Ovalle, Ashwin S, L Soldaini, A Subramonian, H Tu, W Agnew, A Ghosh, K Yee, IF Peradejordi, Z Talat, M Russo, JDJDP Pinhal ACM/AAAI AIES, 2023 \| 📍 Montreal, Canada Paper / Coverage in the AI Ethics Brief Emerging from a participatory workshop (CRAFT Session) at FAccT 2022, this work covers positions and desires of the queer community on bias bounties, specifically questioning their ownership, incentives, accessibility and efficacy.
	Erasing Labor with Labor: Dark Patterns and Lockstep Behvaiors on Google Play Ashwin S, A Arun, P Malhotra, P Desur, A Jain, D H Chau, P Kumaraguru ACM Hypertext, 2022 \| 📍 Barcelona, Spain Paper / Data / Poster / Slides / Coverage in the AI Ethics Brief We uncover how install-incentivizing fraud on Google Play is facilitated via dark patterns and lockstep behaviors, possible due to the exploited labor of users and crowdworkers.
	QueerInAI Demographic Survey 2022-23 Ashwin S, Organizers of QueerInAI Led participatory design with QueerInAI's community to develop a new demographic survey for queer AI researchers and practitioners worldwide. Through an intersectional lens, the survey facilitates understanding of issues and barriers covering several themes, including outness, social and legal climates, harassment, discrimination, and academic conferences.
	Diagnosing Data from ICTs to Provide Focused Assistance in Agricultural Adoptions Ashwin S, M Subramanian, A Agarwal, P Priyadarshi, S Gupta, K Garimella, P Kumaraguru, S Kumar, R Kumar, L Garg, E Arya ICTD, 2022 \| 📍 Seattle, USA Paper Our work in collaboration with Digital Green diagnoses their ICT for disparities in adoption rates of farming practices, identifies potential sources of inequalities and provides implications for alleviating adoption rates of nearly a million farmers in India.
	Hanging Out Online: Social Life During the Pandemic Ashwin S, Grace Eden IFIP INTERACT, 2021 \| 📍 Bari, Italy Paper / Slides *Dean's Special Award for significant achievements in BTech thesis (<2%)* Understanding how the shift from in-person to online computer-mediated social interaction presented opportunities and challenges for college students in India, generating implications for facilitating social serendipity, negotiating intimacy, mutual understanding and more.

⚖️ Advocacy

I belong to a marginalized caste-group (Bahujan) in India and identify as queer. Thus, my advocacy is focused around the regulation of AI systems that harm individuals at the intersection of caste, gender and sexuality.

AAAI '22: Hosted Sai Bourothu at QueerInAI's workshop to talk about the lack of consideration for queer and trans identities in the digitization of criminal records in India and its implications for AI systems built on top of that data.
NeurIPS '21: Moderated a Panel on Caste in Institutions and Tech at QueerInAI's workshop that involved scholars and activists from backgrounds spanning Anthropology, STS, Policy, Law and Economics. [Video] [Twitter Thread]
Helped draft QueerInAI's approach to AI Risk Management, where I elaborated on various historical, social and political considerations that are key to preserving the inclusive and democratic nature of participatory design.

Affiliations & Collaborators

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