Catholijn Jonker, TU Delft

AI can do a lot for good and I see a coevolution between humans and technology, and if you think about technology as just being there to make us more comfortable and do all the work for us, then I am afraid that the coevolution of humankind will go into the direction that is basically leading us to extinction. I would like to create artificial intelligence that challenges us, bring us to a higher level of evolution into the direction that we actually want to go. Determining that direction means that we have to talk about it and we have to stay in debate with each other about it but also with the artificial intelligence we are creating. So for the HumaneAI is really about making that combination, how to challenge each other and grow.

My blue sky project is to create methods for mass deliberation. We are all talking about having participants form the community and having all citizens participate, companies participate in our democracy, we also know that direct democracy gives us interesting problems. How can we at least make sure that everyone that is part of our society, which is everyone, can really understand what the debate is about, understand why others see in a different view and we also believe that if your approach is from a value oriented perspective, you see that the others are not demons, they just have understandable value set that maybe you give a different priority to. You might go for privacy, I might go for safety, and because of the difference in value weight, you might make a different decision than I do, but that doesn’t make you a demon, and it doesn’t make me a demon. So how can we work together and understand each other and form that point of view hopefully find new solutions to the problems our society faces.