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.
"We're trying to grapple with big questions that no discipline has monopoly over. What we want to do is make sure we get the greatest minds studying these questions." — Susan Athey, Professor of the Economics of Technology, Stanford Graduate School of Business
"The problem is that human skills, human institutions, business processes change much more slowly than technology does. We're not keeping up. That's why this human-centered AI initiative is so important. How can we adapt our economics, our laws, our societies? Otherwise, we're going to be facing more of the unintended consequences." — Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy
"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
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TAP Academics
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TAP Blog
In this third of six reports from the Mapping the Use of Facial Recognition in Public Spaces in Europe (MAPFRE) project, Professor Theodore Christakis, Université Grenoble Alpes, and his colleagues provide the first ever detailed analysis of what is the most widespread way in which facial recognition is used in public and private spaces: to authorize access to a place or to a service.
June 23, 2022
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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
Algorithmic decision-making may perpetuate bias if the data used to train the system reflects bias. Thus far, regulators and the courts have not addressed algorithmic bias effectively.
January 3, 2019
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