Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Artificial Intelligence's Impact on Society

Suresh Venkatasubramanian (University of Utah), Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University), Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell University), and Melanie Moses (University of New Mexico) Overview Long gone are the days when computing was the domain of technical experts. We live in a world where computing technology--especially artificial intelligence--permeates every aspect of our daily lives, playing a significant role in augmenting and even replacing human decision-making in a broad range of situations. AIenabled technologies can adjust to your child's level of understanding by processing a pattern of mistakes; AI systems can leverage combinations of sensor inputs to choose and carry out braking actions in your car; web browsers with AI capabilities can reason from past observations of your searches to recommend a new cuisine in a new location. Innovations in AI have focused primarily on the questions of "what" and "how"--algorithms for finding patterns in web searches, for instance--without adequate attention to the possible harms (such as privacy, bias, or manipulation) and without adequate consideration of the societal context in which these systems operate. As a result of this tight technical focus, and the rapid, worldwide explosion in its use, AI has come with a storm of unanticipated socio-technical problems, ranging from algorithms that act in racially or gender-biased ways, get caught in feedback loops that perpetuate inequalities, or enable unprecedented behavioral monitoring surveillance that challenges the fundamental values of free, democratic societies.