At a developer conference earlier this year, I shared our approach to A.I. First, we want to build intelligence that augments human abilities and experiences. Ultimately, it’s not going to be about human vs. machine. We humans have creativity, empathy, emotion, physicality, and insight that can then be mixed with powerful A.I. computation—the ability to reason over large amounts of data and do pattern recognition more quickly—to help move society forward. Second, we also have to build trust directly into our technology. We must infuse technology with protections for privacy, transparency, and security. A.I. devices must be designed to detect new threats and devise appropriate protections as they evolve. And third, all of the technology we build must be inclusive and respectful to everyone….
Cynthia Breazeal at the MIT Media Lab has devoted her life to exploring a more humanistic approach to artificial intelligence and robotics. She argues that technologists often ignore social and behavioral aspects of design. In a recent conversation, Cynthia said we are the most social and emotional of all the species, yet we spend little time thinking about empathy in the design of technology. She said, “After all, how we experience the world is through communications and collaboration. If we are interested in machines that work with us, then we can’t ignore the humanistic approach.”
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