Cogniculture: Towards a Better Human-Machine Co-evolution
This work addresses the societal problem of AI safety and ethics for humanity, proposing a foundational shift rather than an incremental improvement.
The paper tackles the fear of AI threatening humanity by proposing a novel concept of cognitive agents (humans and machines) co-evolving in an adaptive ecosystem to collaborate on human computation for social goods, while ensuring ethical behavior through a governance mechanism.
Research in Artificial Intelligence is breaking technology barriers every day. New algorithms and high performance computing are making things possible which we could only have imagined earlier. Though the enhancements in AI are making life easier for human beings day by day, there is constant fear that AI based systems will pose a threat to humanity. People in AI community have diverse set of opinions regarding the pros and cons of AI mimicking human behavior. Instead of worrying about AI advancements, we propose a novel idea of cognitive agents, including both human and machines, living together in a complex adaptive ecosystem, collaborating on human computation for producing essential social goods while promoting sustenance, survival and evolution of the agents' life cycle. We highlight several research challenges and technology barriers in achieving this goal. We propose a governance mechanism around this ecosystem to ensure ethical behaviors of all cognitive agents. Along with a novel set of use-cases of Cogniculture, we discuss the road map ahead for this journey.