Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to technologies that perceive, learn and reason in ways that simulate human cognitive abilities. TAP scholars consider AI’s effects on labor, business, policing, law, medicine, war, free speech, privacy and democracy, and discuss potential solutions to mitigate harms.
"Are they aware enough of its social impacts and thinking about the effects on society and how to address the problems it creates? That’s what we have to watch for." — Ryan Calo, Professor of Law, University of Washington
"The White House’s latest executive order correctly highlights AI as a major priority for U.S. policymaking." — Kate Crawford, Co-Director, AI Now
"The good news is America’s research infrastructure in artificial intelligence is leading the world. But other countries are making much more aggressive investments and rapidly closing the gap, especially China." — Erik Brynjolfsson, Professor of Economics, MIT
"I’ve seen companies blow hundreds of millions of dollars by letting engineers make decisions without the input of business people. Machine learning solves simple problems, but it is not sentient. And it struggles when applied to many business problems." — Susan Athey, Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business
"The view that we should not worry about any of these things and follow technology to wherever it will go is insane. In the standard economic canon, the proposition that you can increase productivity and harm labor is bunkum." — Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"So while on its face it doesn’t require someone to say who they are, as enforced it has that potential, and it creates a tool to unmask people just by calling them bots." — Ryan Calo, Professor of Law, University of Washington
"It’s time to regulate facial recognition and affect recognition. Claiming to ‘see’ into people’s interior states is neither scientific nor ethical." — Kate Crawford, Distinguished Research Professor, New York University
"The way it would happen would be we would take something that everybody agrees is terrible — something like suicide, which is epidemic, something like child pornography, something like terrorism — so these early things, and then if they show promise in these sectors, we broaden them to more and more things. And that's a concern." — Ryan Calo, Professor of Law, University of Washington
"They understand that things may happen with autonomous vehicles that wouldn't happen with human drivers. They're saying there may be fewer accidents, but there will also be different accidents, and we need to plan for that." — Ryan Calo, Professor of Law, University of Washington
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TAP Academics
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TAP Blog
Economists Susan Athey, Stanford, and Daron Acemoglu, MIT, will be testifying at today’s House Budget Committee hearing on artificial intelligence and the workforce.
September 10, 2020
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Upcoming Events
The Future of Work(ers): Using Technology to Empower Workers in the Age of AI and Automation
September 29, 2020, Berkeley, CA
Shaanan Cohney – Leaving Randomness to Chance: Standards Shortcomings and Buried Backdoors in Random Number Generators
September 29, 2020,
Tal Zarsky – When Small Change Makes a Big Difference: Algorithmic Equity Among Similarly Situated Individuals
October 20, 2020,
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Fact Sheets
Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to technologies that perform learning and reasoning in ways that simulate human cognitive abilities.
Featured Article
Attempting to compare human intelligence to machine intelligence is often incoherent. Human intelligence is not well understood, and human behavior is often irrational.
April 11, 2016
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