Let’s Address the Humans

Feb 14, 2022

When reading media articles about artificial intelligence, one easily gets the impression that AI is somewhat independent of humans. The successes of AI are hailed, including its dominance over humans in games like chess or Go, or its power to analyze data faster, cheaper and more accurate than humans. I have the impression that in many articles and discussions about AI, notions of the future are readable between the lines – either dystopian or utopian, and yet of an entity which is on the brink of outpacing humans.

What is often not present in this discussion is the fact that AI does not develop magically all on its own, but like any other software product, is written by people. These people are mostly not addressed in the general discussion about AI. Their work and their perspective on the technology often remains invisible. I argue that this is damaging to a productive discussion on AI because it inhibits us from recognizing ways in which to influence our future with this technology.

If you are interested in this topic, come and join my panel “Addressing the Humans behind AI and Robotics” at the RAI conference “Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society” in June 2022. The CfP is still open until February 25, so if you work on this topic, I’d be happy to receive your abstract! Please find more information here.