Aviva de Groot, LLM

My research interests broadly concern humans, justice, and technology. Their mutual shaping, and how this affects our understanding of rules and the values that drive them. Within this space, I am especially interested in the interplay of responsibility and possibilities to know and understand the technologies we work with: be they legal, bureaucratic, digital, or 'gofai' power tools. My first degree was in cabinet-making.

While computational developments increasingly define this space, I work to maintain a grounded approach. Professional experience in the legal aid field afforded a thorough appreciation of how in dumber times, already, the transformation of subjects’ self-defined reality to their administrative truths is a complex,sometimes tricky process. The intricate interplay of law, policy and technology discourages a narrow focus on either element.

Concerns around e.g. domination and moral responsibility as raised by the latest generations of decision tools are subject of investigation in my developing thesis "Care to Explain?" Articulating legal demands to explain AI-infused decisions, responsibly. I analyse these subjects through the lens of epistemic justice. I study human, rule-driven explanatory practices, and the epistemic values that (should) drive them. How can modern day decision makers in and on the loop of these processes maintain a responsible relation with decision subjects?

Earlier research addressed privacy and data protection concerns around the use of social robots in health care. I Focussed on human anthropomorphic inclinations in robot interaction, treating robotreactivity as automated decision making. I closely follow the interdisciplinaryrobotics discourse, including artistic expressions. My first career in filmmaking gives me all the additional excuses I need to do so.