As a community, our research will emphasize the overarching question:
How best to build and leverage AI for emerging work environments, balancing emergent opportunities and risks?
Individual research projects may develop new AI/ML tools or theories that support better integration with work systems, including explainable AI tools, better modeling of systemic uncertainty, or interaction of cloud-computing, usable security, or computer architecture constraints on deploying ML algorithms.
Projects may also focus on integrating AI tools in one of three application domains: disaster response, cyber-social landscape or smart and connected mobility:
Disaster Response
The problem: After a disaster, such as a hurricane, terrorist attack, or disease outbreak, responders must assess the situation, then develop and execute a response plan to deliver emergency goods and services and support the recovery of livelihoods, markets, and essential services. Because each situation is unique, AI tools as currently deployed may not improve decision-making in these adverse conditions. However, innovative and convergent approaches to incorporate AI tools in these domains may have a high impact.
Cyber-social landscape
The problem: Online digital platforms, such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc., bring with it new possibilities for work, but also concerns regarding equity, ethics, and market power. Recommender algorithms are designed to shape human behaviors, and these dynamics have been implicated in any number of social ills, including the viral spread of misinformation, and other online harms such as the potential for radicalization.
Smart and Connected Mobility
The problem: To support smart and connected mobility, a city must combine data from a sensor-infused infrastructure, pervasive computational capacity, AI-driven automation, and carefully designed policies in order to improve the lives of all its inhabitants. Optimizing large scale civil infrastructures can be difficult, because there are often competing goals such as simultaneously promoting social distancing and maximizing the efficiency of a metro system during a pandemic.