Machine Behavior

We behave, machines exhibit behavior.   Both can be trained with examples and practice and direction.   Both have been collaborating for some time.   But only recently have machines been given the opportunity to take small amounts of autonomous opportunity.  With our direction.   But that direction is still largely imprecise once we get beyond fundamental but basic arithmetic, statistics  and logic.

A new paper frames the emerging interdisciplinary field of machine behavior   by Janine Liberty

As our interaction with “thinking” technology rapidly increases, a group led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab are calling for a new field of research—machine behavior—which would take the study of artificial intelligence well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences.

“We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab.

Rahwan, Manuel Cebrian and Nick Obradovich, along with other scientists from the Media Lab convened colleagues at the Max Planck Institutes, Stanford University, the University of California San Diego, and other educational institutions as well as from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, to publish a paper in Nature making a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems.

“We’re seeing the rise of machines with agency, machines that are actors making decisions and taking actions autonomously,” Rahwan said. “This calls for a new field of scientific study that looks at them not solely as products of engineering and computer science but additionally as a new class of actors with their own behavioral patterns and ecology.” .... '

Related Nature article.