AI & Human Life

How many times today has technology helped make decisions for you?

Have you used Waze to route you from point A to point B as quickly a possible? Have you asked Alexa or Siri to suggest some music, or has autocorrect improved spelling in your texts or emails? Do you ever stop to think about the influence these technologies have over your decisions and behaviors, or have these technologies simply blended seamlessly into the way you interact with the world?

“Just think about how many times a day you collaborate with an artificially intelligent agent,” says Kate Saenko, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of computer science and director of BU’s master’s program in artificial intelligence (AI). “We are using technology to assist us with little jobs and tasks all the time.”

Although not all of these technologies are truly artificially intelligent, Saenko says we can expect them to get closer and closer to mimicking human decision-making as time goes on. When we get to that point, she wonders, will we humanize those AIs or will we still think of them as technologies?

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