Artificial Intelligence:Progress and ChallengesTom Dietterich

Tool AI

AI Progress

High-Stakes Autonomy

Near-TermRisks

AI Progress

?

TechnologicalUnemployment

What is AI?Smart Software

vision, speech, touch choosing actions to achieve

goals learning understanding and predicting

behavior

Credit: Andrej Karpathy, Li Fei-Fei

Exciting Progress: Perception

2013 2014 2015

23% Word Error

8%

Google Speech Recognition

Credit: Fernando Pereira & Matthew Firestone, Google

Google Translate from Images

Credit: www.bbc.com

“a black and white cat is sitting on a chair."

Credit: Jeff Donahue, Trevor Darrell

Exciting Progress: PerceptionDeep

Exciting Progress: Reasoning (SAT)

Credit: Vijay Ganesh

Exciting Progress: Reasoning (Poker)

Moore’s Law

Heads-Up Limit Texas Hold’em

Rhode Island

Hold’em

Credit: Michael Bowling

Exciting Progress: Chess & Go

Monte Carlo Tree Search

Credit: Martin Mueller

Exciting Progress: Collaborative Systems

Red: Best AI solutionYellow: “Foldit Void Crushers

Group” solutionBlue: X-Ray Crystal Structure

solution

Sept 20, 2011

What’s Next?Tool AI• Google, Bing• IBM’s Watson• Siri, Cortana, Google Now• Google Translate• Skype Real-Time Translation

Autonomous AI• AI Hedge Funds• High Speed Trading• Self-Driving Cars• Automated Surgical Assistants• Smart Power Grid• Autonomous Weapons

Tool AI

AI Progress

Tool AI: What’s Next?Deeper understanding of video:• What type of play?• Who carried the ball?• Was the pass complete?• Which players made mistakes?• Which players achieved their

goals?

Credit: Alan Fern

Tool AI: What’s Next?Deeper understanding of text:• Is Yoadimnadji dead? Yes• Is he in Paris? Yes• Is he married? Yes• Where is his wife? In Paris• Where will she be in the future? In

Chad

“Pascal Yoadimnadji has been evacuated to France on Wednesday after falling ill and slipping into a coma in Chad. His wife, who accompanied him to Paris, will repatriate his body to Chad.”

Tool AI: What’s Next?Linking Big Data to Medicine:• Web search logs can detect

adverse drug interaction events better than FDA’s existing Adverse Drug Interaction Reporting Service

White, Harpaz, Shah, DuMouchel, Horvitz, 2014

Tool AI: What’s Next?Improved Personal Assistants that combine• Knowledge of recipes (lasagna

ingredients)• Wine pairing recommendations

(cabernet or pinot noir)• Brother’s home address• Routes to brother’s home address• Stores along that route that have

cheap cabernet or pinot in stockto produce a plan

Source: Wired August 12, 2014

AI Progress

High-Stakes Autonomy

Near-TermRisks

Autonomous AI Systems: What’s Next?• AI Hedge Funds• High Speed Trading• Self-Driving Cars• Automated Surgical Assistants• Smart Power Grid• Autonomous Weapons

The Motivations The Dangers

High-Stakes Autonomy

Advances in AI enable exciting applications

There is a great potential to save lives

There is a need to act at lightning speed

Bugs Cyber Attacks Mixed Autonomy Misunderstanding User

Commands

Software Quality Many AI methods give only probabilistic

guarantees

Research Question: How can we ensure safe performance of AI-based autonomous systems?

"a young boy is holding a baseball bat." Credit: Andrej Karpathy, Li Fei-Fei

Cyber Attacks High-stakes systems large and enticing “attack surface”

Cyber Attacks on AI SystemsTraining Set Poisoning:

Make yourself invisible to a computer vision system

Make yourself look “normal” to an anomaly detection system

Bias the behavior of the system Bid slightly higher on certain stocks Prefer to show certain advertisements

Credit: Katherine Hannah

Mixed Autonomy Auto-pilot unexpected hand-off to

pilots Pilots lack situational awareness

and make poor decisions

Question: How can we make imperfect autonomous systems safe?

AF447 Pilots Final ConversationPilot 1: “What the...how is it we are going down like this?”Pilot 2: “See what you can do with the commands up there, the primaries and so on...Climb climb, climb, climb

Credit: www.aviationlawmonitor.com

Incomplete/incorrect Commands “Fetch me some water”

Question: How can the computer reliably infer what the user intended?

Credit: www.disney.com

Trustable AI for AutonomyMany research teams are at work

Verification and Self-Monitoring

Knowledge of Desirable and Acceptable Behavior

Improved User Interaction

AI Progress

TechnologicalUnemployment

1980 1990 2000 201040

80

120

160

200

240

280

320

US Industrial Production

US Manufacturing EmploymentInde

x: 0

1.19

72 =

100

Similar trends are seen worldwide

Source: Andrew McAfee / US Federal Reserve

US is Producing More with Fewer Employees

As AI advances, many existing jobs have the potential to be automated

Source: Frey & Osborne, 2014: “The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”

Three Reasons to be Optimistic AI often complements human intelligence rather than

replacing it

Increases in productivity increases in wealth increases in consumption demand for new goods and experiences new kinds of jobs

A focus on current jobs, underestimates the creativity of people to develop new products and services, new industries, etc.

What will be the new jobs? Jobs involving hard-to-automate skills

high levels of social skills deep understanding of human experience and

emotion high levels of creativity

Jobs where human + machine is better than either alone Augmented Cognition combining strategic thinking with detailed

tactics: “Centaur Chess” combining physical dexterity with information

access: augmented reality vehicle maintenance

Source: Tartajubow.blogspot.com

Source: metaio / designboom.com

Historical and cultural artifacts become more valuable

AI cannot produce another Roman Empire, Greek Civilization, or Al Andaluz

AI + Augmented Reality may make tourism even more compelling and meaningful

Credit: http://www.hellovisitspain.com

Life-Long Personal AI Assistant? Human-machine pairs work best when they

know each other very well strengths and weaknesses easy communication preferred ways of sharing tasks

A vision: Student enrolls in technical college Student is given an AI personal assistant The student and the assistant train together

Learn how to solve problems jointly and efficiently Employer hires the pair together

source: starwars.wikia.com

Tool AI

AI Progress

High-Stakes Autonomy

Near-TermRisks

AI Progress

?

TechnologicalUnemployment

Some people are very afraidDecember 2, 2014

October 27, 2014

AI MisconceptionsIntelligence is Not a Threshold Phenomenon

Progress in AI is the accumulation of thousands of incremental improvements

Robots will not “wake up” one day and be “truly intelligent” or “superintelligent” or “conscious” or “sentient”

“Tool AI” systems are already smarter than people along many dimensions

AI MisconceptionsAutonomy Will Not Happen Spontaneously

There is no threshold above which AI systems suddenly have free will Systems need to be designed and built to be autonomous They must be given access to resources (money, power, materials,

generalized task markets, communications with people)

The danger of “Autonomous AI” is not “AI”

but “Autonomy”

An autonomous system can be dangerous for many reasons: It could consume vast resources It could injure or kill people It could apply AI to help it do these things

How Can We Maintain Control of Autonomous Systems?Case 1: Decisions are made at human time scalesExamples:

Aircraft autopilot Most factory robots Surgical robots

Humans can monitor and respond to problems Similar to supervision in a human organization

Case 2: Very High Speed Decision Making

Examples: stock market power grid self-driving cars

18,520 market crashes and spikes have been detected 2006-2011 below the 950ms level

Flash Crash (10.5.2010)

Automated Monitoring Signals might predict or

detect flash crashes Example: Inventory of High-

Speed Traders

Normal market Flash crash

Source: Vuorenmaa, Tommi; Wang, Liang, 2013

When Monitoring Detects A Problem: Then What?Stock market:

Halt trading Unwind transactions

Self-driving car: Slow down and pull over in a safe spot

Smart Electric Grid: ??

We Should Never Create aFully Independent Autonomous System

By definition, a fully independent autonomous system is a system over

which we have no control

Summary AI has been making steady progress Exciting applications of Tool AI are coming soon Potential applications of Autonomous AI are being proposed

Many of these involve high-stakes decision making There are many risks that must be addressed before it will be safe to field such

systems Information technology—including AI—may be contributing to

unemployment but the picture is far from clear Tool AI will not spontaneously become autonomous We must find ways to control autonomous AI systems