Designing AI Futures: A Symbiotic Vision

The new “AI spring” of Machine Learning and Deep learning, backed by Big Data and immense computational power, is opening up potential for innovation of new drugs, medical diagnosis, social robots, ‘Robo-Nurse’ and virtual assistants, but there are also imponderable existential downsides and deep anxiety that AIs are going to take over our jobs, our interaction with societal institutions and our lives. With the accelerated integration of powerful artificial intelligence systems into core social institutions and in our everyday lives, we are confronted with an electronic world where digital bots or electronic ‘agents’ are already representing us in our interactions. We face a challenge of the untamed integration of AI to come up with possible human-machine futures that mitigate the impact of the instrumental models of AI tools and systems. How can we transcend ‘machine thinking’ to mold technological futures for the common good? We need to address questions such as, can we harness collective intelligence as a transforming tool for addressing unpredictable problems of complex social systems? What are the possibilities and limitations of designing creative intelligent systems that are shaped by purpose and judgment, transcending instrument reason of the causal model? The talk will explore these issues, drawing upon current AI narratives of the relations between society and the scientific project of AI and the challenges it poses for us to come up with possible symbiotic AI futures.