From Fitting Participation to Forging Relationships: The Art of Participatory ML

Participatory machine learning (ML) encourages the inclusion of end users and people affected by ML systems in design and development processes. We interviewed 18 participation brokers—individuals who facilitate such inclusion and transform the products of participants’ labour into inputs for an ML artefact or system—across a range of organisational settings and project locations. Our findings demonstrate the inherent challenges of integrating messy contextual information generated through participation with the structured data formats required by ML workflows and the uneven power dynamics in project contexts. We advocate for evolution in the role of brokers to more equitably balance value generated in Participatory ML projects for design and development teams with value created for participants. To move beyond ‘fitting’ participation to existing processes and empower participants to envision alternative futures through ML, brokers must become educators and advocates for end users, while attending to frustration and dissent from indirect stakeholders.