Leading Transdisciplinary Conversations around AI: Using Future Visioning to Unpack Skills in AI Ecosystems

Transdisciplinary practices in artificial intelligence (AI) requires good methodological techniques to bring researches together from diverse disciplines. Different fields and traditions each may have an impact on the greater AI ecosystem, however, to properly gauge this impact, and include diverse voices, research methodologies must evolve to adopt new methods and techniques. To understand the shifting demands for new skills, we conducted a transdisciplinary workshop, bringing together stakeholders from industry, government and academia, with a focus on the industries of healthcare and emergency response. Our workshop utilized future visioning methodologies, allowing participants to project their thinking into future case study scenarios to imagine the uptake of new skills across job roles. We found that future visioning was a useful tool within the context of trans disciplinary AI research, to help frame discussions in a manner conducive to eliciting qualitative evidence of different policy approaches.