Learning AI Ethics through Game Design as Ethical Inquiry

Abstract

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) responsibility gap is an abstract and uncertain ethical problem. Judgements of responsibility may change as the situation, available information, and the conditions for action change. Pre-designed ethics cases give learners a concrete setting for discussion, but the problem is usually framed in advance. This study examines a facilitated participatory game-making process as a way to explore questions of responsibility. Fifteen students from computing-related disciplines at a UK university took part in a qualitative participatory study involving case discussion, collaborative tabletop game design, prototype playtesting, and reflection. The analysis focused on how participants translated their understanding of responsibility into game design and how they reconsidered that understanding during later playtesting and discussion. The findings show how participants moved from broad responsibility judgements to more situated reflection as they reconstructed an initially framed problem through collaborative design, playtesting, facilitation, and debriefing. Some previously implicit assumptions and uncertainties became visible in the prototypes and returned as topics for further discussion. The study presents game making as part of an integrated process of ethical inquiry through which participants can articulate, test, and reconsider their judgements of responsibility.