Future and emerging technology (FET) research aims to create radically novel ideas and technologies that can disrupt and transform human lives, businesses and society as a whole. The European Commission has funded such research in its FET stream of research funding which has now been renamed as “EIC Pathfinder” programme.
Such transformative research can be greatly beneficial. At the same time it can raise social and ethical concerns, linked to the processes of research and innovation, as well as their purpose and outcomes. One way of supporting benefits while mitigating social, ethical and regulatory risks and downsides is called responsible research and innovation (RRI). The foundational idea of RRI is to align “ research and innovation to the values, needs and expectations of society” (Rome Declaration, 2014).
Since its introduction to the discourse in the early 2010s (Stilgoe et al., 2013; Von Schomberg, 2011) RRI has been subject to much research. It was adopted in different flavours by many research fundings, notably the European Commission in its Horizon 2020 programme.
While conceptual foundations and practical implementation of RRI have developed significantly during the last decade, one pervasive problem remains. This is that the skills and background required to implement RRI are unevenly distributed and many scientific and technical researchers who would benefit from integrating RRI into their research have limited awareness and experience of it.
This is the gap that the EMBRACE (Embedding RRI in Future and Emerging Technologies) project aims to address. The idea behind EMBRACE is that the Human Brain Project (HBP) has been on the forefront of much RRI research and practice and that other research projects in similar areas could greatly benefit from the insights we have gained. EMBRACE is itself an EU-funded FET launchpad project and a partnering project of the HBP.
In order to determine which needs researchers have, EMBRACE interviewed 40 coordinators of FET launchpad projects. These are projects that take the next step after an FET research project to commercialise and exploit research insights. The interviews focused on the question which knowledge needs these researchers have and how they could benefit from RRI-related knowledge and services. After drawing up a list of potential topics and services, EMBRACE in early 2022 ran three focus groups to refine possible service offerings. The idea is to develop these further to the point where they can be offered as commercially available services that FET / Pathfinder and other projects or institutions can make use of. They will be offered through ORBIT (the Observatory for RRI in ICT), a non-profit spin-out company from the University of Oxford and De Montfort University dedicated to providing RRI services.
Having identified and defined the knowledge and service needs, EMBRACE is now at the point of offering these services for the first time. We have identified four topics, all of which will be offered as training courses, both online and face-to-face.
The training courses and associated services offered cover these topics:
- Data Governance and Data Protection
- online workshop – 6th May 2022
- face to face workshop – 16th June 2022
- Stakeholder Engagement
- online workshop – 26th April 2022
- face to face workshop – 15th June 2022
- Design of Ethical AI Systems
- online workshop – 26th April 2022
- face to face workshop – 17th June 2022
- Research Integrity
- online workshop – 27th April 2022
- face to face workshop – 14th June 2022
Participation in these initial deliveries of the training can be free of charge whereas subsequent deliveries will need to be paid for. We expect that these initial deliveries will inform us about the commercial viability of these courses.
We are excited about these upcoming opportunities and are looking forward to engaging with the FET / EIC Pathfinder communities and other researchers and innovators. We hope that the courses demonstrate that there is a viable market for RRI-related training and services which will be one way to ensure that the work we have undertaken in the HBP and elsewhere during the last decade will continue to have an impact and ensure that science, research, innovation and society’s needs and expectations are aligned.