The Paradox of Values
A leader might say they value fairness—but fairness might mean something entirely different to those who are supposed to live with the consequences. One person's justice might be another’s exclusion. In conversations, in policy, in design—values guide decisions, but rarely get unpacked. They’re treated as universal truths, yet in reality, they are deeply contextual and positional. Both cultural and social contexts shape how people understand what matters.
Before we can train machines to reflect human values, we need to confront a basic tension: even humans struggle to articulate them. We reach for words like empathy, trust, or equality, but those words carry different meanings depending on who speaks, who listens, and what’s at stake.
If machines are learning, who gets to decide what they understand?
In the rush to align AI with human values, we risk encoding oversimplified definitions and losing nuance in the name of clarity. This project begins with a simple question:
How do people actually interpret values in different contexts?
Making Meaning, Together
If values are fluid, interpreted differently by each of us, then teaching machines to understand them must begin with listening. Teach Me to See Through Your Eyes is an interactive web-based experiment that invites the public to engage in that listening by sharing how they would perceive, choose, and live values like fairness, empathy, or trust in different contexts. Through short, scenario-based prompts, participants are asked to respond to real-life dilemmas where meaning must be weighed and interpreted.
Rather than rely on fixed value labels, the project builds on the concept of positional values—embracing how context and culture shape what people truly mean when they say what they value. In doing so, it reframes AI technology as a communal, shared resource that we have both the right but also the duty to shape in accordance with our values.
This platform (https://throughyoureyes.eu/) invites all perspectives. In a world increasingly shaped by opaque systems, Teach Me to See Through Your Eyes encourages reflection, participation, and reimagination to help inform our AI future.
