Q&A: Participatory Machine Learning

In May 2020, Fernanda Viégas, Jess Holbrook, and Martin Wattenberg -- who cofounded Google Research's People AI Research (PAIR) initiative in 2017 -- sat down to talk about participatory machine learning, a core idea central to the direction PAIR's research and projects have taken. They took the conversation as an opportunity to further articulate and explore the concept in theory and especially in practice. David Weinberger, PAIR's writer-in-residence, prompted them with questions. Fernanda: From the beginning, PAIR has had a broad research agenda focused on putting humans at the center of building AI technology. For instance, we were building tools to help developers understand their data and model behaviors, but we were also working on how doctors do or don't trust AI-assisted diagnoses. We were bringing Tensorflow to the web and publishing human-centered AI guidance for UXers.