2015 ShapetheDebateDontShyfromIt
- (Hauert, 2015) ⇒ Sabine Hauert. (2015). “Shape the Debate, Don't Shy from It.” In: Nature Journal, 521(7553).
Subject Headings: Artificial Intelligence Prediction
Notes
- In the same issue as:
- (Russell, 2015) ⇒ Stuart Russell. (2015). “Take a Stand on AI Weapons.” In: Nature Journal, 521(7553).
- (Altman, 2015) ⇒ Russ Altman. (2015). “Distribute AI Benefits Fairly.” In: Nature Journal, 521(7553).
- (Veloso, 2015) ⇒ Manuela Veloso. (2015). “Embrace a Robot-Human World.” In: Nature Journal, 521(7553).
Cited By
Quotes
Irked by hyped headlines that foster fear or overinflate expectations of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), some researchers have stopped communicating with the media or the public altogether.
But we must not disengage. The public includes taxpayers, policy-makers, investors and those who could benefit from the technology. They hear a mostly one-sided discussion that leaves them worried that robots will take their jobs, fearful that AI poses an existential threat, and wondering whether laws should be passed to keep hypothetical technology ' under control'. My colleagues and I spend dinner parties explaining that we are not evil but instead have been working for years to develop systems that could help the elderly, improve health care, make jobs safer and more efficient, and allow us to explore space or beneath the oceans.
Experts need to become the messengers. Through social media, researchers have a public platform that they should use to drive a balanced discussion. We can talk about the latest developments and limitations, provide the big picture and demystify the technology. I have used social media to crowd-source designs for swarming nanobots to treat cancer. And I found my first PhD student through his nanomedicine blog.
The AI and robotics community needs thought leaders who can engage with prominent commentators such as physicist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur–inventor Elon Musk and set the agenda at international meetings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Public engagement also drives funding. Crowdfunding for JIBO, a personal robot for the home developed by Cynthia Breazeal, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, raised more than US$2.2 million.
There are hurdles. First, many researchers have never tweeted, blogged or made a YouTube video. Second, outreach is 'yet another thing to do', and time is limited. Third, it can take years to build a social-media following that makes the effort worthwhile. And fourth, engagement work is rarely valued in research assessments, or regarded seriously by tenure committees.
Training, support and incentives are needed. All three are provided by Robohub.org, of which I am co-founder and president. Launched in 2012, Robohub is dedicated to connecting the robotics community to the public. We provide crash courses in science communication at major AI and robotics conferences on how to use social media efficiently and effectively. We invite professional science communicators and journalists to help researchers to prepare an article about their work. The communicators explain how to shape messages to make them clear and concise and avoid pitfalls, but we make sure the researcher drives the story and controls the end result. We also bring video cameras and ask researchers who are presenting at conferences to pitch their work to the public in five minutes. The results are uploaded to YouTube. We have built a portal for disseminating blogs and tweets, amplifying their reach to tens of thousands of followers.
I can list all the benefits of science communication, but the incentive must come from funding agencies and institutes. Citations cannot be the only measure of success for grants and academic progression; we must also value shares, views, comments or likes. MIT robotics researcher Rodney Brooks's classic 1986 paper on the 'subsumption architecture', a bio-inspired way to program robots to react to their environment, gathered nearly 10,000 citations in 30 years (R. Brooks IEEE J. Robot. Automat. 2, 14–23; 1986). A video of Sawyer, a robot developed by Brooks's company Rethink Robotics, received more than 60,000 views in one month (see go.nature.com/jqwfmz). Which has had more impact on today's public discourse?
Governments, research institutes, business-development agencies, and research and industry associations do welcome and fund outreach and science-communication efforts. But each project develops its own strategy, resulting in pockets of communication that have little reach.
In my view, AI and robotics stakeholders worldwide should pool a small portion of their budgets (say 0.1%) to bring together these disjointed communications and enable the field to speak more loudly. Special-interest groups, such as the Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Coalition that is promoting a US market for commercial drones, are pushing the interests of major corporations to regulators. There are few concerted efforts to promote robotics and AI research in the public sphere. This balance is badly needed.
A common communications strategy will empower a new generation of roboticists that is deeply connected to the public and able to hold its own in discussions. This is essential if we are to counter media hype and prevent misconceptions from driving perception, policy and funding decisions.
References
;
| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 ShapetheDebateDontShyfromIt | Stuart J. Russell Manuela Veloso Sabine Hauert Russ B. Altman | Shape the Debate, Dont Shy from It |