Michael I. Jordan

Artificial intelligence (AI) has focused on a paradigm in which intelligence inheres in a single, autonomous agent. Social issues are entirely secondary in this paradigm. When AI systems are rolled out in social contexts, however, the overall design of such systems is often naive--a centralized entity provides services to passive agents and reaps the rewards. Such a paradigm need not be the dominant paradigm for information technology. In a broader framing, intelligence inheres as much in the overall system as it does in individual agents, be they humans or computers. This is a perspective that is familiar in the social sciences, and a key theme of Michael I. Jordan's talk is that of bringing economics perspectives into contact with computer science perspectives. He also digs into the implications for business models based on AI.