Research Philosophy Zine

Cover

Towards truly community-centered research.
Our research philosophy, by the Distributed AI Research Institute.

Page 1

Page description: There is a short blurb of text at the top, followed by a flowchart taking up most of the page.

Text: Welcome! This zine is about questions we ask ourselves to do better research. But to do that, we have to start by asking: What even is research?

Research isn’t just taking measurements, running surveys, and writing papers. Research can be a lot of things. In fact…

Wait a minute. You. Yes, you.
Might you be a researcher?

Image description: Next is a flowchart, whose text is described in full below. Around the flowchart are word bubbles with different hypothetical questions, which will also be listed.

Flowchart

Text: Are you employed by an institution to conduct research?

If yes, you continue to: “you’re a researcher! Uh... surprise?”

If no, continue to the next question: “Are you experimenting with different things to see what happens?”
The word bubbles that surround this question read: How late can I drink coffee before it affects my sleep? Can I influence the ads I get served based on what I search?

If yes, you continue to the end, which reads: “Well, what do you know: you might just be a researcher!”

If no, continue to the next question: “Are you asking around and searching for answers?”
Word bubbles: Dear Mr. President, how were dogs domesticated? Hi friends, why is social media kinda scary? Hey mom, how does targeted advertising work?

If yes, you continue to the end: “Well, what do you know…”

If no, continue to the next question: “Are you thinking deeply about hard questions?”
Word bubbles: “Is the internet actually a good thing for society? How do you know when you have a truly free press?”

If yes, you continue to the end: “Well, what do you know…”

If no, you continue to: “Then you’ve got some homework: go ask some questions!”

The arrow exiting that step reads “once you do…” and points to the end, bringing you to “Well, what do you know, you might just be a researcher!”

Page 2

Page description: This page is primarily text, with a border around it that depicts different hands waving around, shaking hands, and reaching for each other.

Text: Often when people talk about “doing research”, they’re talking about one very particular thing: traditional academic research conducted within universities.

But other forms of research are happening all around us, if you know where to look:

research is happening when a group of workers is recording overtime violations;

it’s happening when people gather online to document their experiences living with a chronic illness;

it’s happening when people cultivate medicinal plants over generations.

Oftentimes, university researchers can end up “parachuting” into communities doing their own research, extracting their knowledge as a resource and claiming any resulting accolades as their own.

(There’s just no separating it from its roots in 17th century European colonialism, after all.)

In defining a research philosophy, we want to encompass the breadth of all of what research can truly be. To do that, we must start by redefining research radically— that is, at its roots.

Page 3

Page description: There is a large header followed by text. Around this page are scattered different, vaguely human-shaped abstract colored blobs. Two of them look like they are holding hands with a word bubble above them that reads “Hi, we’re collaborators!”.

Text: With so many kinds of research happening in so many ways, there are endless opportunities for us to help each other in our work. This is especially important for those of us studying social issues.

But forming collaborations between different kinds of researchers can be challenging.

If you’re from a traditional academic background, you may be trained to center your own priorities, norms, and ways of thinking so much that you unknowingly reproduce these patterns of exploitation and extraction.

And if you’re coming from a non-traditional background, you may not think of your work as “research” at all. While there’s nothing wrong with that, thinking of your work as research might open you up to new tools and ways of thinking.

How do we address these dynamics to form partnerships that benefit everyone? Well, we don’t have any answers, but we wrote this research philosophy to ask ourselves questions to help us connect, communicate, and unravel the power dynamics keeping us from helping each other.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: before you can form collaborations, you need somebody to collaborate with! How can you tell when a research collaboration might be a good match?

Here’s one way we think about it. Wonder if there might be a fruitful collaboration in store? You can ask yourself:

1. Are you already studying the same thing in different ways?
2. Are you both concerned about the same problems?
3. Do you have complementary skillsets?

If your answers are mostly “yes”, this might be a partnership just waiting to happen!

When researchers come together, inside or outside of academia, we can make some real magic!

Page 4

Page description: This page is structured as a matching exercise. There are 6 colorful abstract blob people scattered around the page, each one with a text bubble coming from it. As an example, there is a pencil with a dotted line connecting person #1 with person #3 (listed below).

Text: Here are some examples of people doing different kinds of research. Match pairs of people to make research partnerships!

1. My union just started a campaign to collect wage info from our whole shop. We’re pretty sure people are being paid unfairly.
2. I’m a social media content creator. I wrote a guidebook for other content creators on how to optimize for social media algorithms. It’s what everyone uses now!
3. I’m writing a graduate thesis on wage discrimination in Bangladesh.
4. I’m a public school teacher of 25 years. I’m worried these new AI tools are bad for students, so I’m sending out a survey to our school’s parents and teachers. I want to make a case for changing school policy.
5. I’m a school board member working on a budget for the upcoming school year and we’re deciding how much to spend on new technology. I’m doing some reading about how chatbots impact kids’ learning outcomes.
6. I write papers about the impacts of social media algorithms. I’m really interested in how people shape their content to “game the algorithms”.

Pages 5 and 6

Page description: This is a two-page spread. There are a few small paragraphs of text on the first page. In the remaining space, each of the 7 research pillars are named, each surrounded by a drawing of abstract blob people holding hands in a circle. The pillars are:

1. Community
2. Trust & Time
3. Knowledge Production
4. Interrogating Power
5. Redistribution
6. Accountability
7. Imagination

Text:

Our Research Philosophy

Throughout this zine,
we’ll take you through the seven pillars of our research philosophy, as they stand now.

They’ll always be in a process of growth, negotiation, and redefinition. That’s why we define them, not as rules, but as questions.

They were initially written with partnerships between more traditional academic researchers and communities outside of academia in mind. But we hope these questions might open up conversation among all researchers.

Take them not as a template, but as a provocation.

Pages 7 and 8

Page description: In the middle is a stylized photograph of pixelated people standing in a circle holding hands. Text is scattered throughout the page in a web of scribbly dashed lines.

Text:

1. Community

The people with firsthand experience of technology’s harms should be the ones driving tech ethics research.

There is a long history of researchers parachuting in and co-opting research.

So much knowledge has been authored by specific communities but used for researchers’ own end.

Resisting this requires consistent self-critique, a willingness to challenge power, and sustained, equitable relationship-building.

We ask ourselves:

Who considers us insiders?
Who considers us outsiders?
Can our relationship with collaborators be weaponized against them?
How do we decide who to support, to listen to, to trust for information?
Who do we have access to?
Who can we not reach?
How might we be in community in some ways (e.g. nationality) and not in others (e.g. class)?
Are we using shared identity to ignore other power dynamics?
Who is impacted by our work?
Who are we trying to serve?

Pages 9 and 10

Page description: On the left side, there is a stylized photo of hands reaching towards an hourglass. Text is scattered throughout the page.

Text:

2. Trust + time

Truly equitable collaboration relies on deep, sustained trust.

That takes time, effort, and investment on everyone’s parts, beyond the scope of any one project or publication.

We can’t do this work alone.

We ask ourselves:

How are we engaging with
collaborating communities? For how long?
What trust is being placed in us, implicitly and explicitly? Are we honoring that after our findings are published?
How are we making sure collaborating communities can shape the research process?
How do we ensure communities can access and use our findings?
How do we balance research questions and community needs with limited resources and time? How do we move beyond that binary?
Is our research project set up in a way that gives us the time and structure to establish meaningful relationships with collaborators?
What are we doing to earn trust?
What might we be doing to erode it?

Pages 11 and 12

Page description: Around the left page are different stylized pictures of books; on the right are pictures of flowers.

Text:

3. Knowledge Production

There are many ways of knowing, studying, and understanding the world.
Research can happen just as much in an organizer’s living room as a university lab.
We can weave together many forms of research towards the collective co-construction of knowledge.

We ask ourselves:

Whose expertise do we trust?
How is our research helping fight injustice?
Who are we learning from? Who are we citing?
What forms of research do we legitimize as “real knowledge”?
How does our research prompt critical conversations and support community organizing?

Pages 13 and 14

Page description: Text is set against a pixel art drawing of mountains with a river running down it. The river snakes through the mountains and splits many times as it reaches the bottom of the mountain, trailing off in different directions.

Text:

4. Redistribution

Participation in research should happen in relations of reciprocity.
Research participation is a form of labor and knowledge transfer.
Thus, research participation should happen in the context of mutual support, where financial resources, platforms, and opportunities are shared between researchers and community collaborators.

We ask ourselves:

How can we funnel financial resources to scholar-activists already doing the work?
How are we compensating community collaborators? What do they get out of our research?
Are community collaborators getting the same funds, acknowledgement, opportunities, and respect that we get from research?
How does this project uplift local activists, researchers, and journalists who have been working on the ground for longer?
Where do our resources come from? Where do they end up?

Pages 15 and 16

Page description: In the middle of the page is a set of scales, surrounded by a stylized image of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the scales.

Text:

5. Accountability

Research should be materially shaped by practices of accountability that move it towards alignment with its stated goals, commitments, and values.

Our work should always happen in a network of feedback from community collaborators, peers, and trusted mentors.

We ask ourselves:

How are we empowering others to hold us accountable to our values and commitments?
How can we foster dialogue between our research questions and the community’s needs and experiences?
Who is the primary recipient of our research contributions?
Are our research outputs broadly accessible?
Who do we hold ourselves accountable to?

Pages 17 and 18

Page description: Purple jagged abstract mountains surround a stylized image of a city. Above the city, giant cartoon eyes look down, one eyebrow up.

Text:

6. Interrogating Power

Understanding why people and communities “on the margins” are broadly excluded from AI development, and how this affects all of us, requires interrogating power.

In AI research, decision makers and tech elites need to be studied and questioned.

We ask ourselves:

Whose power does our work question?
What power structures is our work legitimizing?
How can our research interrogate tech and research elites?
Is our research helping community collaborators ask questions themselves instead of being interrogated?

Pages 19 and 20

Page description: Text is scattered around the page against an orange backdrop of clouds, overlaid with wild squiggles and abstract shapes.

Text:

7. Imagination

To build a better technological future, we need to dream beyond existing systems towards futures that may seem impossible now.

We ask ourselves:

Are we giving ourselves space to imagine otherwise?
What kind of imaginaries is our research encouraging?
What horizons is our research reaching towards?
How is our research helping to question the status quo?
What assumptions are we making about the future?
Whose imagination are we living in?

Pages 21 and 22

Page description: There is a circle of abstract blob people holding hands in the middle of the page.

Text: At the end of the day, research is better when we do it in community, together.

This isn’t just a call to question, rethink, and reimagine. It’s a call to action.

Won’t you join us?

Back cover

Page description: The quote from Dr. Gebru is in a large balloon, with a tiny person dangling from the string below. Below the balloon there is a QR code that links to this website, as well as additional text.

Text:
“AI needs to be brought back down to earth. It has been elevated to a superhuman level that leads us to believe it is both inevitable and beyond our control. When AI research, development and deployment is rooted in people and communities from the start, we can get in front of these harms and create a future that values equity and humanity.”

• Dr. Timnit Gebru, Founder & Executive Director of DAIR

Design & Illustration by Pauline Wee
Content & Research by Dylan Baker

Community
Trust & Time
Knowledge Production
Redistribution
Accountability
Interrogating Power
Imagination

dair-institute.org