The field of AI research is about to get way bigger than code

When it comes to developing artificial intelligence, the largest technology companies in the world are all-in. Google and Microsoft say they're "AI-first," and businesses like Facebook and Amazon wouldn't be possible without the scalable personalization that AI allows. But if you look for research on how artificial intelligence affects society--like how algorithms used in criminal justice can discriminate against people of color, or whether data used to train AI contains implicit bias against women and minorities--there's almost no academic or corporate research to be found. Kate Crawford, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and Meredith Whittaker, founder of Open Research at Google, want to change that. They announced today the AI Now Institute, a research organization to explore how AI is affecting society at large.