Put Humans at the Center of AI

Worked with the Stanford AI lab, and a number of the startups and students that came out of it.

Put Humans at the Center of AI  in Technology Review

At Stanford and Google, Fei-Fei Li is leading the development of artificial intelligence—and working to diversify the field.     by Will Knight  

As the director of Stanford’s AI Lab and now as a chief scientist of Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li is helping to spur the AI revolution. But it’s a revolution that needs to include more people. She spoke with MIT Technology Review senior editor Will Knight about why everyone benefits if we emphasize the human side of the technology.

Why did you join Google?

Researching cutting-edge AI is very satisfying and rewarding, but we’re seeing this great awakening, a great moment in history. For me it’s very important to think about AI’s impact in the world, and one of the most important missions is to democratize this technology. The cloud is this gigantic computing vehicle that delivers computing services to every single industry.

What have you learned so far?

We need to be much more human-centered. If you look at where we are in AI, I would say it’s the great triumph of pattern recognition. It is very task-focused, it lacks contextual awareness, and it lacks the kind of flexible learning that humans have. We also want to make technology that makes humans’ lives better, our world safer, our lives more productive and better. All this requires a layer of human-level communication and collaboration.

How can we make AI more human-centered?

There’s a great phrase, written in the ’70s: “the definition of today’s AI is a machine that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire.” It really speaks to the limitations of AI. In the next wave of AI research, if we want to make more helpful and useful machines, we’ve got to bring back the contextual understanding. We’ve got to bring knowledge abstraction and reasoning. These are all the most important steps. .... " 

AI Exceeding Human Performance

Predictions are cheap,  machines have been faster than humans for some time, but when inserted in a set of tasks that that need to be done can be very different.   Thoughtful ideas here:

Intelligent Machines
Experts Predict When Artificial Intelligence Will Exceed Human Performance

Trucking will be computerized long before surgery, computer scientists say.  by Emerging Technology from the arXiv  May 31, 2017

Artificial intelligence is changing the world and doing it at breakneck speed. The promise is that intelligent machines will be able to do every task better and more cheaply than humans. Rightly or wrongly, one industry after another is falling under its spell, even though few have benefited significantly so far.

And that raises an interesting question: when will artificial intelligence exceed human performance? More specifically, when will a machine do your job better than you?

Today, we have an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Katja Grace at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and a few pals. To find out, these guys asked the experts. They surveyed the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence by asking them when they think intelligent machines will better humans in a wide range of tasks. And many of the answers are something of a surprise. .... " 

AI Can Take Your Job

'All' is a very inclusive word.

AI may take your job - in 120 years
A global survey of experts in machine learning suggests it will be 120 years before all human jobs are automated.

In 45 years' time, though, half of jobs currently filled by humans will have been taken over by an artificial intelligence system, results indicate.   The report, When will AI exceed human performance?, says AI will reshape transport, health, science and finance.

The study was compiled by the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), at the University of Oxford.

It asked three keys questions about AI:

How will high-level machine intelligence affect economic growth?
What are the chances this will lead to extreme outcomes?
What should be done to help ensure AI progress is beneficial? .... "