Man plus computer saves the world
Fear drives unhelpful extremes, while somewhere in the middle lie solutions. In human interactions large and small new discoveries, alarming events, even inventions tend to spur extreme reactions — an “all or nothing” approach, exclusionist perspectives, predictions of doom and gloom.
Artificial intelligence is like that. Exciting, yes, but despite life-saving advancements in medical science, worker safety, and other helpful arenas, AI technologies also breed fear of human replacement.
Humans — who design and control these technologies — remain not only necessary, but crucially important, as one team of AI researchers recently concluded. In the journal Science, the team of researchers at the Human Computation Institute and Cornell University present a hopeful vision of a human-machine network to solve the world’s thus far unsolvable “wicked problems,” which HCI defines as intractable societal problems such as climate change, pandemic disease, and geopolitical conflicts. These multifaceted issues exceed the reach of individual human cognitive abilities, involving multiple systems which — if not approached and solved collectively — can harm one system (e.g., economies) while helping another (e.g., Earth’s ecosystem). Machines are far more advanced at analyzing and calculating multiple complex, multi-system data sets.
This level of complexity, especially combined with human-to-human and cross-border distrust, is beyond a human-only solution, say researchers. It’s also inappropriate for computer-only analysis; humans still surpass machines at certain pattern recognitions, at cognitive abstraction, at seeing how things will affect people emotionally, psychologically — and how these reactions in turn impact the future. But put the two together, and the potential is inspiring. HCI fleshes out this human-machine partnership to benefit mankind. And it’s doable, approached in project-sized pieces.
“Human computation” is a term introduced by Luis von Ahn, a Guatemalan entrepreneur, which refers to distributed systems that combine the strengths of humans and computers to accomplish tasks that neither can do alone. A simpler example is reCAPTCHA, a Web widget used by 100 million people a day when they transcribe distorted text into a box to prove they are human. HC’s potential is more exciting.
The Human Computation Institute is a U.S.-based, nonprofit group of scientists who work remotely from across the globe to identify ways to help society by leveraging the complementary strengths of networked humans and machines. This vision is not merely a government-to-government operation; it’s a citizen-based, crowd-sourced, information-sharing, participatory collective idea. An approach to societal good fed by high-tech resources managed by humans. Which fits right in with the way Millennials, who will be soon be running the show anyway, tend to see things.
Many of today’s “wicked problems” are unintentional consequences of collective behavior (e.g., air pollution), so using “crowd power” to solve them seems fitting. This means project-based partnerships (already ongoing) of researchers and tech experts with humanitarian workers, medical care providers, engineers, funding sources, etc. Four networked elements make a “solution team:” a human computation specialist, domain/subject expert, a “mission-focused” funding partner, and an on-the-ground implementer.
Mutually beneficial. High- and low-tech blended. Collaborative. Grass-roots. Duty-focused. Organized. The future looks hopeful.
For more information see Humancomputation.org and Sciencemag.org.
Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.