UC Berkeley artificial intelligence (AI) expert Stuart Russell will lead a new Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, launched this week. BRETT, the Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks, ties a knot after watching others demonstrate it. Russell, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and the Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is considered the standard text in the field of artificial intelligence, and has been an advocate for incorporating human values into the design of AI. The primary focus of the new center is to ensure that AI systems are beneficial to humans, he said. The co-principal investigators for the new center include computer scientists Pieter Abbeel and Anca Dragan and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths, all from UC Berkeley; computer scientists Bart Selman and Joseph Halpern, from Cornell University; and AI experts Michael Wellman and Satinder Singh Baveja, from the University of Michigan.

UC Berkeley artificial intelligence (AI) expert Stuart Russell will lead a new Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, launched this week. BRETT, the Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks, ties a knot after watching others demonstrate it. Russell, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and the Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is considered the standard text in the field of artificial intelligence, and has been an advocate for incorporating human values into the design of AI. The primary focus of the new center is to ensure that AI systems are beneficial to humans, he said. The co-principal investigators for the new center include computer scientists Pieter Abbeel and Anca Dragan and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths from UC Berkeley; computer scientists Bart Selman and Joseph Halpern from Cornell University; and AI experts Michael Wellman and Satinder Singh Baveja from the University of Michigan.