The design-for-values movement is based on the idea that technology can promote certain values and discourage others.⁵ ⁶ Desirable values include, for example, equality between men and women, healthy living, personal safety, sustainable living, environmental responsibility and valuing democracy. The hope is that, with this approach, positive conversations about such values would be amplified on a suitably designed social media platform, for example, while fake news and and cyber-bullying would be diminished.

Future Horizons:

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5-yearhorizon

International design-for-values efforts demonstrate first successes

International forums such as the IEEE see their agreed design-for-values standards increasingly adopted by developers of products and services.⁷ Discussions on the future of artificial intelligence begin to see progress towards designing for values in AI systems.

10-yearhorizon

Awareness campaigns amplify the interest in design for values

Grass-roots organisations highlight negative issues associated with poorly designed intelligent machines, such as the development of inappropriate relationships with nature and humans, and between them, including poor quality of information sharing. This drives greater interest in the design-for-values approach. Major institutions of higher education provide courses on design for values, complex dynamical systems and global systems.

25-yearhorizon

Policy-makers require design for values as a mandatory part of technology development

Positive results from various high-profile demonstrations of successful technological design-for-values solutions lead to the formation of a global forum aiming to extend the approach to all intelligent machinery.

The technologies of intelligent cities that monitor their citizens in a privacy-respecting way and adapt to their behaviour have the scope to embody values of one kind or another. Such cities are already evolving, and it is important for us to consider — and influence — the values they will promote, in accordance with national constitutions and human rights, as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Design for values is a complex undertaking, however, and (due to feedback and side effects) such interventions are not always guaranteed to achieve their intended purpose from the beginning. As researchers in the field of machine learning have pointed out, without careful, deeply considered design, technologies can create unanticipated and perhaps unwanted consequences. In any cases, design for values has become an urgent approach to master the challenges in our increasingly technological age more successfully.

Design for Values - Anticipation Scores

The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:

The uncertainty related to future science breakthroughs in the field
The transformative effect anticipated breakthroughs may have on research and society
The scope for action in the present in relation to anticipated breakthroughs.

This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.