Google Creates Research Initiative To Study How Humans Interact With AI

Google has started studying the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) with the launch of the People + AI  Research Initiative (PAIR).

The undertaking brings together researchers from across the search giant to study how people interact with AI systems in order to see what new applications and use cases the smart technology can enable and to ensure that it is made to be as inclusive as possible.

This will involve looking at how to make it easier for engineers to build and understand machine learning systems, explore how AI can augment professionals in their working environment, and to see how everyone can benefit from AI.

Google AI and human research

“The goal of PAIR is to focus on the “human side” of AI,£ explained martin Wattenberg, senior staff research scientist at the Google Brain Team.

“The goal isn’t just to publish research; we’re also releasing open source tools for researchers and other experts to use.”

For developers not at Google, access to more open source AI tools fuelled by human-centric research could be a boon if they are keen to develop smart applications that are also intuitive for the end-user.

Two tools are being made open source already; Google’s Facets Overview and Facets Drive, both designed for AI engineers and aim to address the starting segment of AI development, notably in providing a clear view of the data engineers use to train AI and machine learning systems.

“We think this is important because training data is a key ingredient in modern AI systems, but it can often be a source of opacity and confusion. Indeed, one of the ways that ML engineering seems different than traditional software engineering is a stronger need to debug not just code, but data too,” noted Wattenberg.

Given how Google is injecting more AI features into its portfolio of Android and web services, as well as developing driverless cars, it comes as no surprise that the search giant is continuing to push AI research.

Quiz: What do you know about Android?