  As public sector agencies rapidly introduce new AI tools in high-stakes
domains like social services, it becomes critical to understand how decisions
to adopt these tools are made in practice. We borrow from the anthropological
practice to ``study up'' those in positions of power, and reorient our study of
public sector AI around those who have the power and responsibility to make
decisions about the role that AI tools will play in their agency. Through
semi-structured interviews and design activities with 16 agency
decision-makers, we examine how decisions about AI design and adoption are
influenced by their interactions with and assumptions about other actors within
these agencies (e.g., frontline workers and agency leaders), as well as those
above (legal systems and contracted companies), and below (impacted
communities). By centering these networks of power relations, our findings shed
light on how infrastructural, legal, and social factors create barriers and
disincentives to the involvement of a broader range of stakeholders in
decisions about AI design and adoption. Agency decision-makers desired more
practical support for stakeholder involvement around public sector AI to help
overcome the knowledge and power differentials they perceived between them and
other stakeholders (e.g., frontline workers and impacted community members).
Building on these findings, we discuss implications for future research and
policy around actualizing participatory AI approaches in public sector
contexts.
