The Coming Era of Decision Machines

These concerns have been present whenever we make important decisions. What's new is the much, much larger scale at which we now rely on algorithms to help us decide. Human errors that may have once been idiosyncratic may now become systematic. "Artificial intelligence is the pursuit of machines that are able to act purposefully to make decisions towards the pursuit of goals," wrote Harvard University Professor David Parkes in "A Responsibility to Judge Carefully in the Era of Decision Machines," an essay recently published as part of Harvard's Digital Initiative. "Machines need to be able to predict to decide, but decision making requires much more," he wrote.