The case for empathetic AI

three years ago

i was cleaning my room on a saturday

afternoon

when i heard the tv switch on in the

living room with a very noisy cartoon

it was quite unusual especially at 3 p.m

in the afternoon considering i am the

kind of dad who tried to limit screen’s

exposition for my young children

so i moved to the living room and i saw

my two boys two and three years old

nicely sitted on the sofa watching

paw patrol so i first

turned back to my wife and asked her why

she had turned on the tv

but it was not her so i went back to the

living room and i asked my son

how i turned on the tv knowing he never

did it before

and to top it off he was watching a

youtube video which represents quite a

complex process

and he replied i asked google papa

clever but it was to my surprise

that my son three years old was simply

able to order

to google ok google can you play paul

patrol

and get something he would never get

from me

especially at 3 p.m on the afternoon but

also

without being polite i’m french and you

know how important it is to be polite

for french people

at that time i asked myself

should i teach my kids to be polite to

google

does google need to learn some manners

and ask for my permission

some things started to be crystal clear

google like many others was

at my home as part of our lives in

forgetting

some fundamental family rules

google’s intelligence assisting and

easing our life

functionally entertaining our family

may slowly influence our kids behaviors

from the youngest age when they start

getting their personalities

shaped we think we create human-centric

ai

but we create machines that are not

entirely serving on mankind

and that generates a much larger

impact on our lives than the one we

expected

and not the most positive one

for instance social media platform we

are using

almost every day sometimes 10 hours a

day

generates a polarization of all society

in influencing and exacerbating all

beliefs

and they are deliberately designed to

make us

addicted and such addiction

generated by those algorithm has

unfortunately been linked with feeling

of unhappiness

depression and mental health issues in

compulsive users

such platforms supposed to serve our

humanity

isolating us are finally not considering

the social element

the social power for human element

and this provokes bad human behavior

change

and ai is even worsening exploiting

our human weaknesses and by relying too

much on technology

sometimes things can go really wrong

like this woman in canada who just drive

drove into the lake stupidly and

following a gps

but the reason i’m actually showing you

this news

is such a similar story is happening to

each of us

almost every day let me explain you

how such dependence and machine affect

our health

and or cognition this is where i live in

singapore

i am living on the 29e of this straight

which naturally comes after the 29a

29bcnd

further down the road before reaching my

home

most of the time i order a taxi the gps

indicates to the taxi driver

to stop at the level of the 29a instead

of 29e

and i can guarantee you taxi driver will

always stop at the level of 29a

and never look around if someone is

waiting a few meters away

i could see on your face it has already

happened to you right

and half of the time the taxi driver

unfortunately missed my street

certainly because the gps algorithm is

not accurate enough

but what worries me is this could happen

two or three times before the driver

even realized something is wrong

have you ever realized a taxi driver can

go around in circle in your neighborhood

for 20 minutes without finding your

street

without realizing is lost but also

without getting informed by the machine

that something is not right

such utter dependence on machine creates

a definite problem

in fact it is affecting all cognition

and studies have proven that habitual

use of gps could pose

long-term health issues such as a higher

risk of alzheimer

as just described ai is embedded in our

daily lives

making multiple decision a longer human

journey

taking some of the most advanced example

facial recognition

is now used to pay at the cashier or

open a gate

health diagnostic are entirely proposed

by machine intelligence

and alone approval would be very soon

entirely in the ends of an algorithm

and these algorithms are walking days

and night 24 hours today and we

don’t see them these

shadow walkers govern a substantial part

of our existence

influence our behaviors potentially

affect our cognition

they often constitute a threat to our

privacy

and this without offering us the

possibility of interacting with them

with a note explaining their choice or

their decision

and without asking for our permission

are we not missing here a two-ways

communication between human and machine

a kind of homogeneous interaction

protocol

to freely define ourselves in relation

to it

and act better accept them as part of

our life

what are we really missing

human are working hard on ai

but ai is not being designed to work

hard enough

for human look ai

system focus essentially on servicing

our human functional needs

however even if they are trained to

detect any addictive

human behavior they are not trained to

prevent

them which can affect our relationship

or health

and have a broader impact on our society

and its organization

ai seeks to understand how our human

cognition

works by creating cognitive processes

that emulate those of human beings

and yes in doing so ai improve the speed

accuracy and efficiency of how people

think and work however

it seems as well its prolonged used

weakens or human cognitive abilities

over time

ai governed lots of our life’s decision

whether personally or

professionally and is unfortunately very

often

not able to explain the reason of such

decision

and properly interact with us to help us

better accept

its choice and what it is offering

current ai design is simply not

taking enough into consideration what

make us truly human

and different from the machine

or behaviors or cognition or emotion

or social interaction

look we rely every day on ai

and ai is even not able to recognize

when we are wearing a mask

while we human continue to recognize

ourself

amongst each other and this is due to

our unique

cognition and social interaction

abilities

we have built these things so it is our

responsibility to change it

in reconsidering our human uniqueness

succeeded in human machine cohabitation

is what is the most complicated used to

say

dominic volton head of research at the

french national center for scientific

research

the for such cohabitation to happen

efficiently

we need to give more space to human in

the design of ai

product and services and foster more

human machine

interaction this will help us to create

real human centric ai

how to proceed first

we need to reassess our ai impact our

lives

behaviors and cognition whether it is on

the short term

or in the long term and we need to

leverage the power

of the data gathered by those ai

products and services to do so

why do we not have a gps based product

or transportation platform

frequently proposing to their drivers

cognition test for instance

the richness of this platform in terms

of data

may really help in detecting any kind of

bad human behavior or addiction

detecting social media addiction might

also be very simple

facebook capturing enough data

should be able to send a signal when a

very addictive behavior

is detected and the strengths of its

algorithm and machine learning

already very much used to detect fake

news

may also be used to analyze how such

addiction could be linked

to any mental health issue as a support

to our healthcare professional

but this would require to be in the

mindset of

maybe opening a bit more this knowledge

and data set to our physician

and maybe slightly changed the business

model of this platform

highly based on our addiction

second we need to redesign ai products

and services

in reconsidering our human and machine

complementarity

and a very good example is the mine nai

process that has been proposed by the

liquid news

center for innovative cities at sutd

here in singapore their team

conducted some applied research on the

design of a gps 2.0

envisioning what a future of the gps

could look like

and instead of a turn-by-turn

instruction drivers

might be given

visual and special cues to help them

navigate in the city

like turn right at the red building or

turn left

after the petrol station at the level of

the bridge

thus protecting the drivers cognitive

and spatial sense of the city

why do we not ask also google to give us

the option to train its algorithm to

some of our

essential social family roles and

eventually allow google to

recognize how we may be polite to each

others

last but not least we need to rescue ai

from its lack of interaction with human

for ai to be truly accepted it should

not be designed

as a trojan horse but offer more human

interaction

and if we want to make a step forward

towards social acceptability of ai

it is a responsibility to pull them out

of the shadow

allow us to see them and interact with

them

let’s push any machine in the social

interaction space to better communicate

with human

by interacting with the taxi driver

in adjusting you know the car

temperature to his mood or playing a

song he likes or even

asking him a question at the end of the

day to know how is he feeling

an algorithm would both work out its

accessibility

and eventually get access to really even

data point

related to the driver’s behaviors and

emotional status

let’s also enhance such interaction

with the maximum of transparency

i would personally value very much that

an

algorithm could give me the reason i

have been rejected from alone

such transparency would help remove

the high reluctance we human have

towards those

shadow walkers and their ambiguity

ai is everyone’s concern

and if we want machine to adapt to all

human needs

each of us would need to assist

them in their adaptive process assess if

they are doing well

and delivering what we are considering

is a human-centric

outcome for each of us

what if we could rate more how machine

fulfill our human and social needs

when we give a five stars to a taxi

driver we are not always

assessing how punctual he was but

sometimes how nice to us he was right

so let’s do systematize such behaviors

and

guide algorithm in delivering a better

and more personal human-centric outcome

and

reward them when they take care of us as

human

let’s reimagine a world where we will

assess more how human

are the artificial intelligence let’s

re-imagine a world

designed around our coexistence with

machine

let’s re-imagine a world in

reconsidering our human uniqueness

and re-empowering any human in guiding

machine

to deliver the right outcome

i am very positive towards such world

and i do hope my kids will be very soon

rewarded by google

with the free perpetual episode but only

when they have been polite thank you