The Future of AI Needs To Have More People in It

If smart machines and AI agents are meant to support human goals, how might we help them better understand human needs and behaviors? UC Berkeley professor and AI scientist Anca Dragan suggests we need a more human-centered approach in our algorithms:

Though we���re building these agents to help and support
humans, we haven���t been very good at telling these
agents how humans actually factor in. We make them
treat people like any other part of the world. For
instance, autonomous cars treat pedestrians, human-driven
vehicles, rolling balls, and plastic bags blowing down
the street as moving obstacles to be avoided. But people
are not just a regular part of the world. They are
people! And as people (unlike balls or plastic bags),
they act according to decisions that they make. AI
agents need to explicitly understand and account for
these decisions in order for them to actually do well. [���]

How do we tell a robot what it should
strive to achieve? As researchers, we assume we���ll
just be able to write a suitable reward function for
a given problem. This leads to unexpected side effects,
though, as the agent gets better at optimizing for
the reward function, especially if the reward function
doesn���t fully account for the needs of the people the
robot is helping. What we really want is for these
agents to optimize for whatever is best for people.
To do this, we can���t have a single AI researcher designate
a reward function ahead of time and take that for granted.
Instead, the agent needs to work interactively with
people to figure out what the right reward function
is. [���]

Supporting people is not an after-fix
for AI, it���s the goal.
To do this well, I believe this next generation should
be more diverse than the current one. I actually wonder
to what extent it was the lack of diversity in mindsets
and backgrounds that got us on a non-human-centered
track for AI in the first place.

AI4ALL | The Future of AI Needs To Have More People in It