AI for Just Work: Constructing Diverse Imaginations of AI beyond "Replacing Humans"
This addresses the AI community's vulnerability to manipulation by promoting ethical and diverse visions for AI's role in society, though it is incremental as it builds on existing critiques.
The paper tackles the lack of critical reflection on the purposes of AI, identifying a monoculture focused on replacing humans and improving productivity, and proposes diversifying AI imaginations to embed ethical assumptions, demonstrated through an application in medical image synthesis.
"why" we develop AI. Lacking critical reflections on the general visions and purposes of AI may make the community vulnerable to manipulation. In this position paper, we explore the "why" question of AI. We denote answers to the "why" question the imaginations of AI, which depict our general visions, frames, and mindsets for the prospects of AI. We identify that the prevailing vision in the AI community is largely a monoculture that emphasizes objectives such as replacing humans and improving productivity. Our critical examination of this mainstream imagination highlights its underpinning and potentially unjust assumptions. We then call to diversify our collective imaginations of AI, embedding ethical assumptions from the outset in the imaginations of AI. To facilitate the community's pursuit of diverse imaginations, we demonstrate one process for constructing a new imagination of "AI for just work," and showcase its application in the medical image synthesis task to make it more ethical. We hope this work will help the AI community to open critical dialogues with civil society on the visions and purposes of AI, and inspire more technical works and advocacy in pursuit of diverse and ethical imaginations to restore the value of AI for the public good.