Artificial Intelligence and Human Agency
Let’s meet and discuss in Hyderabad later this year (in Nov 2019).
A future scenario. A senior and a junior doctor discussing a case.
(The medical terms have been converted into their simpler equivalents)Junior: Its pretty complicated. Chest pain and rashes on the soles. Our AI (Artificial Intelligence) software indicates heart problem.
Senior: What do the tests reveal?
Junior: There was congestion. We gave decongestants. It helped. But the pain doesn’t go.
Senior: Is patient asthmatic?
Junior: Yes, occasionally. Why did you ask that?
Senior: It may be a simple allergy. Did he eat something, which doesn’t normally. I mean something he is uncomfortable with?
Junior: But our AI software does not indicate allergy.
Senior: How can we be sure about that?
Junior: I have fed all the test results and the case history details. Thanks to the National Patient Database, I do not think we are missing anything these days.
Senior: What if it is allergy?
Junior: How can be you sure about that.
Senior: How can the AI be so sure about that not being the case.
Junior: We don’t know. What we know is that we cannot risk going against it. If AI loses, nobody is going to ask. If we lose, many people would.
The nature of relationship between humans and computers is evolving. At a fast rate, that is to say. One of the prime factors is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithms. From buying to travelling and from diagnosis to decision-support, the algorithms are becoming pervasive.
Algorithms are nebulous because they are difficult to point at. You may not know that an algorithm has lead you to wrong conclusions (for example, while diagnosing a disease). This is because the link between an algorithm and its outward manifestation could not be seen. Nor could be seen the intention of the “designer””of the algorithm. This makes them extremely powerful. As a result, the user, who interacts through the digital interface, becomes vulnerable to the asymmetric power equation.
All this brings to an interesting set of questions: What do algorithms put at stake? Who bears the cost? Who should be held accountable? Who decides what goes in the algorithm and how should they behave? What kind of power asymmetries may occur? Then, what happens to human agency?
How to think about the complex future that is being shaped by the emerging technologies?
- Would bringing the experts together to talk out future possibilities help?
- Or, we could go the stakeholders of the future, very importantly the ones with less voice, and illustrate the future scenarios with them?
- Or, should we educate the young generation, the decision makers of tomorrow for these challenges?
India HCI
India HCI is an attempt to do that. India HCI is the Indian conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is a wide and multidisciplinary field that focuses on the interface of humans and computers. The humans are understood to be in a wider sense that includes not only the physical but also the social, cultural, economic and political dimensions. Computers include all types of digital artifacts that work on a large number of devices-PC, mobile phones, ATM, kiosks etc. IndiaHCI, in particular, looks at the problems specific to India where the contexts are different and more complex than those of the developed nations.
Over the last decade, IndiaHCI has focused on many areas. It has been able to invite and publish high-quality research papers that discussed HCI in the Indian context. Examples include
1. Why WhatsApp became the preferred messaging application in India?
2. How low-income families use voice-user interfaces?
3. Gender and HCI: who technologies are designed for and in what ways?
The conference has also been able to invite renowned scholars from around the world. This is augmented by workshops on methods, which are of a wide variety, used in HCI. In addition, there have been a showcase of research from the industry as well as student’s work.
IndiaHCI 2019 is the tenth conference in the series. It will be held in Hyderabad from 1–3, November 2019. The theme of this year is ‘Agents and Agency: HCI in the age of Machine Intelligence’. It is driven by the fact, as we have earlier mentioned, that AI is too useful to be not talked about. However, agency to manipulate the technology which is a long-recognized topic under HCI needs a revisit. Therefore this year’s conference will focus and examine the interplay of human and machine agency in an increasingly complex world resulting from AI.
To know more, write at:
outreach@indiahci.org
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