Arvind Narayanan

There is widespread frustration about the AI industry’s “automate everything" agenda. But what would it take to steer AI toward augmenting human capabilities instead? In a new essay, Gabriel Unger (@_gabrielunger) and I lay out a research agenda and plan for action. https://www.normaltech.ai/p/steering-ai-beyond-automation Our thesis is that the reason why AI-for-automation currently dominates isn’t just economic incentives but also deeper cultural issues in computer science as a field. And that can be changed. - We sketch four important research directions that are needed in order to build collaborative or augmentative AI. The automation paradigm largely ignores these technical challenges. - We advocate for Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Centered AI to be elevated as a subfield in status, influence, and funding, and changing AI curricula to emphasize the role of the human and decrease the centrality of the pure-automation problem framing. - We point out that there are a surprising number of efforts in economics, computer science, industry, and policy all trying to bring about a shift toward augmentation, but not enough collective awareness. Better connecting these movements would amplify their power. - We think the automation agenda is struggling on its own terms. Compiling evidence of the limits of general-purpose agents for automation and loudly making the case will encourage more companies to take collaboration more seriously as a goal. - We predict that once more workers experience this way of working and recognize that there are alternatives to the delegate-and-supervise pattern, it will generate more demand, creating a flywheel effect. - Targeted policy levers can play a small but important role in amplifying both the supply and demand for pro-worker AI. We don’t need clumsy top-down mandates. We're not against automation. But we think the goal of AI must be broader. This is the start of a long-term project. I know there are far more like-minded efforts out there than we’re aware of. I’d love to hear about some of them.