Today’s education system has created a rift between STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and the humanities. It may seem counterintuitive, but studying the humanities actually makes you a better scientist. Scholars of literature, philosophy, art, and history develop an understanding and appreciation for what it means to be human. I believe it is vital for scientists to study these fields, especially in a modern world full of rapid technological advances….
As I worked on my project, I spent multiple weeks outside the lab where I exclusively read books and papers, on subjects ranging from art to artificial intelligence…. In philosophy class, meanwhile, I learned about Plato’s Theory of Forms, and realized that I was trying to recreate a similar understanding of the visual world in computers.
Making connections between these diverse fields helped me develop the necessary insights to make headway on my interdisciplinary problem: teaching a computer to learn and interpret visual scenes.
My work falls into an emerging category of AI research called explainable AI — that is, building artificial intelligence systems that can articulate their thought processes to humans. This is an important area of AI safety, which merges ethics and philosophy with the more technical side of computer science.
In general, the gray area where ethics and tech meet is ripe for exploration…. When most people think about the future of humanity, they envision a universe where science has propelled our species towards a better tomorrow. But science alone is not enough to solve the world’s problems: that science needs to be done by people who understand what it means to be human.
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