IBM response to White House OSTP request for information about the future of artificial intelligence

1. The Future of Artificial Intelligence:
An IBM Research, Chief Science
Office Cognitive, Perspective
Guru Banavar, IBM VP, Chief Science Office Cognitive
Jim Spohrer, Director, Understanding Cognitive Systems
DRAFT v5: September 7, 2016
Note: This presentation has a companion whitepaper, available on request.
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2. Request:
White House OSTP
• The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is particularly
interested in responses related to the following topics:
• (1) the legal and governance implications of AI;
• (2) the use of AI for public good;
• (3) the safety and control issues for AI;
• (4) the social and economic implications of AI;
• (5) the most pressing, fundamental questions in AI research, common to
most or all scientific fields;
• (6) the most important research gaps in AI that must be addressed to
advance this field and benefit the public;
• (7) the scientific and technical training that will be needed to take advantage
of harnessing the potential of AI technology;
• (8) the specific steps that could be taken by the federal government,
research institutes, universities, and philanthropies to encourage multi-
disciplinary AI research; and
• (9) the use of open data sets to close fundamental research gaps;
• (10) the role of incentives and prizes to accelerate public benefits;
• (11) any additional information related to AI research or policymaking, not
requested above, that you believe OSTP should consider.
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3. Response: IBM Chief Science Office Cognitive
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4. A. The Use of AI for the Public Good
• Healthcare
• Social Services
• Education
• Financial Services
• Transportation
• Public Safety
• The Environment
• Infrastructure
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5. B. Social and economic
implications of AI
• History: Technologies with broad
potential across industries like AI
increase:
• Productivity
• Earnings
• Job growth
• Adjustment: Social, learning, and
decision making capabilities are
key to acceptance of AI in society
• Underserved: Potential to help
underserved populations and
improve their quality of life
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6. C. Education for
harnessing AI technologies
• Demand: High demand for AI,
machine learning, data science and
related courses; many MOOCs
• Industry Platforms: Growing set of
companies provide learners access to
cognitive service capabilities in their
clouds
• Gap: Need curriculum for learners
with no programming or advanced
mathematics background
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7. D. Fundamental questions
in AI research, and
the most important
research gaps
• Machine learning and reasoning
• Decision techniques
• Domain-specific AI systems
• Data assurance and trust
• Radically efficient computing
infrastructure
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8. E. Data sets that can
accelerate AI research
• Bottleneck: Develop and validate
data sets that are:
• Large and unbiased
• Openly curated
• Publically accessible
• Domains: Novice to expert task
performance is hard to get for all
occupations and industries
• Models: Incentives to share trained
models that require lots of data and
compute time to create
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9. F. Multi-disciplinary
research
• Disciplines: Breadth of disciplines
to tackle issues:
• Psychology and cognitive science,
philosophy, design and art, public
policy and management, law and
regulations
• Systems: Professional associations
to tackle industry and system
issues, including novice to expert
progression on tasks
• Socio-technical system design
loop and smart service systems
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10. G. Role of incentives
and prizes
• Example:
• IBM Watson AI XPrize ($5M)
• Best AI system to empower teams
of people to tackle the world’s
grand challenges
• TED 2020, finalists present
• I-athlon
• More objective scoring
• Rational processes
• Multiple dimensions of intelligence
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11. H. Safety and
control issues for AI
• Trust & Trustworthiness
• Ethical & Social Norms
• Algorithmic Transparency
• Unexpected Interactions
• Safeguards
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12. I. Legal and governance
implications of AI
• Responsible & inclusive dialogue
• Elevate the dialogue
• Algorithmic responsibility
• Individual privacy
• Jobs and workforce transformation
• Safety
• Learn beyond the headlines
• Key: Focus on skills
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13. J. Other issues:
Business models
• Trusted platform
• Training – Unbiased data
• Algorithms - Transparency
• Services - Open API Economy
• Transactions – Blockchain
• Applications – Ethically boosting
creativity and productivity
• Governance – Laws and regulations
• Trust takes time
• Steam engines – boiler explosions
• Cognitive engines – headline hype
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14. Some reactions…
• aitrends
• Artificial Brilliance
• Futurism
• InformationWeek
• Calburn: “IBM: AI Should Stand For
‘Augmented Intelligence’
• PYMNTS
• TechCrunch
• Coldewey: “The White House
requested input on artificial
intelligence, and IBM’s response is a
great AI 101”
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15. White House OSTP
Follow Up
• The White House OSTP received
161 responses and created a 349
downloadable PDF with URL links
• The White House Frontiers
Conference is being planned as a
follow up meeting
• Date: October 13, 2016
• Place: Pittsburgh, PA USA
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16. Acknowledgements
• Sam Adams
• Guru Banavar
• Rob High
• Mark O’Riley
• Francesca Rossi
• Vijay Saraswat
• Anna Sekaran
• John R Smith
• Jim Spohrer
• Peter Williams
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