Push and Pushback in Contesting AI: Demands for and Resistance to Accountability

TL;DR

This paper explores how communities and groups contest AI systems by analyzing 43 real-world cases, revealing strategies and responses in accountability struggles.

Contribution

It provides an empirically grounded framework for understanding AI contestation dynamics and institutional response tactics.

Findings

Actors use diverse strategies to demand accountability from AI developers.

Institutions respond by accepting, resisting, or circumventing accountability.

Contextual factors influence the success and nature of contestation efforts.

Abstract

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in daily life, it has been shown to fail critically, cause harm, and spark public controversy, prompting affected communities, workers, and public-interest groups to contest it. Yet how these contestations unfold in practice remains underexplored. We address this gap by developing an empirically grounded account of AI contestation dynamics. We do so through a thematic analysis of 43 real-world cases in which affected actors direct demands toward those responsible for AI development and deployment, seeking redress, influence, or changes to AI practices. Situating our work within Bovens's relational model of accountability, we conceptualize contestation as accountability-seeking: a dynamic, iterative process in which actors "from below" direct explicit demands at actors "from above," who respond by accepting, resisting, or circumventing accountability. Our analysis produces empirically grounded categories of contestation strategies, institutional response tactics, outcome types, and the contextual factors that shape them, illuminating how accountability is pursued and evaded in practice. We show that those being contested often deploy a range of strategies to limit their accountability. Based on these insights, we offer guidance for researchers, policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders seeking to support effective AI contestation, with particular attention to anticipating and countering institutional strategies used to evade accountability.