Paul Hekkert

Willem van der Maden, Derek Lomas, Malak Sadek et al.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a double-edged sword: on one hand, AI promises to provide great advances that could benefit humanity, but on the other hand, AI poses substantial (even existential) risks. With advancements happening daily, many people are increasingly worried about AI's impact on their lives. To ensure AI progresses beneficially, some researchers have proposed "wellbeing" as a key objective to govern AI. This article addresses key challenges in designing AI for wellbeing. We group these challenges into issues of modeling wellbeing in context, assessing wellbeing in context, designing interventions to improve wellbeing, and maintaining AI alignment with wellbeing over time. The identification of these challenges provides a scope for efforts to help ensure that AI developments are aligned with human wellbeing.

Willem van der Maden, Derek Lomas, Paul Hekkert

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues advancing, ensuring positive societal impacts becomes critical, especially as AI systems become increasingly ubiquitous in various aspects of life. However, developing "AI for good" poses substantial challenges around aligning systems with complex human values. Presently, we lack mature methods for addressing these challenges. This article presents and evaluates the Positive AI design method aimed at addressing this gap. The method provides a human-centered process to translate wellbeing aspirations into concrete practices. First, we explain the method's four key steps: contextualizing, operationalizing, optimizing, and implementing wellbeing supported by continuous measurement for feedback cycles. We then present a multiple case study where novice designers applied the method, revealing strengths and weaknesses related to efficacy and usability. Next, an expert evaluation study assessed the quality of the resulting concepts, rating them moderately high for feasibility, desirability, and plausibility of achieving intended wellbeing benefits. Together, these studies provide preliminary validation of the method's ability to improve AI design, while surfacing areas needing refinement like developing support for complex steps. Proposed adaptations such as examples and evaluation heuristics could address weaknesses. Further research should examine sustained application over multiple projects. This human-centered approach shows promise for realizing the vision of 'AI for Wellbeing' that does not just avoid harm, but actively benefits humanity.