Collaborations between social scientists and humanities scholars and scientists and engineers are central to many activities described as responsible research and innovation (RRI). This presentation compares and contrasts our experiences of STS involvement in artificial intelligence in Japan and synthetic biology in the UK. We show that although we work in two different technoscientific fields in two different countries, there are many similarities between our experiences. There is a difference, however, in our relationships to “ethical, legal and social issues” or ELSI research, which has proven productive in STS research on AI in Japan, but can be a constraint when studying synthetic biology in the UK. Drawing from our work in both these fields, the presentation argues for the value of long term, incremental collaborations, built up organically and informally over time. These types of collaboration ideally result in a form of responsibility that is distributed amongst disciplines, rather than delegated to the STS researcher, and they provide an example of “alternative practices” for RRI.