Public opinion is clear: People don’t want the AI we have created. It is also clear that many AI industry leaders are eager to change directions because of the tremendous harm they are on track to cause, but have struggled to do so. In this talk, I will discuss the perilousness of the current moment and the urgent need for a new AI paradigm that is much more likely to have net societal benefits.
I will also argue that, to meet the moment, each of us in the research community – whether at universities or at AI companies – needs to fully reconsider our research program. What each of us does tomorrow likely needs to be quite different than what we’ve done in the years and decades up to this point.
Dr. Brent Hecht
Northwestern University and Microsoft
I will then detail two research directions that can likely help unlock a much better AI paradigm: (1) reinventing how AI uses data to halt what can be reasonably called the largest theft in human history and (2) intentionally building AI systems to complement human labor versus the AI field’s current implicit and explicit goal of targeting job substitution.
Dr. Brent Hecht has been doing award-winning human-centered artificial intelligence research for over 15 years. His early work was central in identifying what we now call ‘algorithmic bias’. More recently, Dr. Hecht was one of the first scholars to raise alarms about how AI uses data without consent or compensation. For over a decade, he has advocated for alternative approaches that give people and institutions control over how their data is used in AI, not only for those people and institutions, but also to mitigate some of AI’s most significant societal harms. In doing so, his lab originated ideas like “data strikes”, “data dividends”, and “data leverage”. He is the recipient of a CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation and was on the founding executive committee of ACM FAccT, the premier publication venue for responsible AI research. Dr. Hecht’s work has received Best Paper recognition at top-tier publication venues in AI and related fields (e.g. ACM SIGCHI, ACM KDD, ACM CSCW, ACM Mobile HCI, AAAI ICWSM).
Dr. Hecht is also Director of Applied Science and a Partner at Microsoft, where he leads a team of researchers dedicated to some of the hardest and highest-value opportunities for AI in productivity scenarios. His team’s areas of focus include private and trustworthy approaches to fine-tuning and AI analytics, AI systems for teamwork, and goal-driven AI systems. Dr. Hecht also co-leads Microsoft’s New Future of Work Initiative, its cross-company effort focused on understanding and improving the future of work. He additionally has served as Microsoft’s scientific advisor for its data strategy.