A Collectivist Vision for AI

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has focused on a paradigm in which intelligence inheres
in a single, autonomous agent. Social and economic issues are entirely secondary in
this paradigm. When AI systems are deployed in social contexts, however, the overall design of such systems is often naïve—a centralized entity provides services to passive agents and reaps the rewards. Such a paradigm need not be the dominant paradigm for information technology. In a broader framing, agents are active, they are cooperative, and they wish to obtain value from their participation in learning-based systems. Agents may supply data and other resources to the system only if it is in their interest to do so, and they may be honest and cooperative only if it is in their interest to do so. Critically, intelligence inheres as much in the overall system as it does in individual agents, be they humans or computers. This is a perspective that is familiar in economics, although without the focus on learning algorithms. A key theme in my work is that of bringing (micro)economic concepts into contact with foundational issues in the computing and data sciences. I’ll emphasize some of the design and analysis challenges that arise at this tripartite interface.