How I learned to stop worrying and love AI

In Voltaire's Candide, Dr. Pangloss is relentlessly optimistic in theface of novella's unflinching portrait of the human condition; hisopposite, Martin, is pessimistic and cynical. Today's developmentsaround Artificial Intelligence are being driven by similarly opposingforces. The Panglossian approach views AI as humanity's grasping ofPromethean fire whereas others see existential risk and threats tohuman safety, privacy, and wellbeing. We might hope that the realityis somewhere in between but we must first acknowledge that we probablyhave the problem framed incorrectly.This presentation attempts to summarize my personal views regarding AIthat I have acquired on my voyages of the last 10 years. First, as amember of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA)leadership team in the Defense Sciences Office (2014-2017); next asthe founding director of the Applied Research Laboratory forIntelligence and Security, the Department of Defense'suniversity-affiliated research center (UARC) for the social sciencesand AI at the University of Maryland (2018-2023); and lastly as SeniorAdvisor for AI Risk Modeling for Biden Administration's Office ofScience and Technology Policy (2023-2024). The bottom line, upfront:-- Current AI narratives are techno-philic and need to be re-framed because the thorniest problems are decidedly non-technical---they are mostly about AI's interaction with people and society;-- We do not have the required level of scientific understanding about AI and its effects on people and society required to establish rigorous engineering practices and manage its use; and, lastly-- The impacts of AI, operating at various levels in our society (ranging from individuals to our planetary community as a whole), are going to be uneven in scale, speed, and impact.Rather than merely admire these problems, I would like to re-framethem as inherently socio-technical. I will provide a practicalmethodology for identifying emerging scientific and engineeringquestions related to the ongoing integration of AI with humans andsociety. Using this approach, I will provide several examples ofresearch questions that merit investigation. In the end, I hope toprovide a unique perspective on recent developments in AI and atangible means by which we might address these daunting emergingchallenges.