NDU · Theme 05
Policy, Ethics & the Imagined User
Policy documents contain a person: informed, connected, literate, unhurried. Much of the harm in AI governance comes from the distance between that person and the real one.
Current questions
- Which human does AI policy imagine, and who falls outside it?
- How do ethical principles survive translation into procurement and practice?
- What would participatory AI governance look like in an African context?
Where it is being worked out
Projects
Case studies
- Algorithms of Trust
Critical discourse analysis of South African AI policy against public narratives.
Reading & direction
Next direction
Contributions to national and institutional AI governance debates grounded in empirical behaviour.
Reading
- Sheila Jasanoff — The Ethics of Invention
- Virginia Eubanks — Automating Inequality
- Langdon Winner — Do Artifacts Have Politics?
Ask about this theme
The research guide can take a question about policy, ethics & the imagined user and point you to the closest published work, or say where there is not yet an answer.