Initial Themes
We looked at agents along three inter-dependent dimensions: (1) How the agents present themselves to humans; (2) What relations and ecologies they create within the contexts in which humans use them; and (3) What infrastructures they need.

Questions and topics of discussion included:
(1) Agents: Human-likeness, self-representation, and personality. What types of responses do conversational agents give to ethical issues, and how does that influence our expectations toward them? What types of questions are systematically avoided? How do they present themselves and how aware are they of biases?

(2) Relations and ecologies: Contexts of use, human and non-human relations, and ecologies of interactions.What kinds of relations and ecologies do conversational agents elicit through their interaction with humans, as well as with other non-human agents? How do these relations change with shifting contexts of use? What kinds of relations matter more to humans, and why? In what instances does the authority/power of a conversational agent become visible, and problematic?

(3) Infrastructures: Training data, security, privacy, and commercial interests. What material and immaterial infrastructures, such as human labor, data, and planetary resources, can be disclosed by using decentered forms of ethnography? How does the disclosing of infrastructures challenge traditional divisions of design and use? How could that help us uncover biases and their origin? What would it take to design an unbiased agent?