Doctoral Dissertation Research: Encoding the Human in AI Development, Ethics, and Safety Communities

AI开发人员如何看待其技术的社会影响？本论文的研究探讨了人工智能的前沿，最近的进展引起了行业成员和更广泛的公众的兴奋和关注。通过研究开发人员在日常工作中如何应对这些进步，该项目记录了行业中信仰，规范和价值观的出现。反过来，它显示了技术行业的政治和社会结构如何影响其更广泛的利益和危害。该项目的研究结果可以支持人工智能安全和伦理研究人员的工作，以增强人工智能的影响。该项目还可以为希望管理这一新兴技术影响的政策制定者和活动家的活动提供信息。研究结果将通过学术和公共媒体文章、向AI开发、安全和伦理研究人员的演讲以及博士论文进行传播。该项目使用人种学方法研究AI开发、安全和伦理研究人员的工作和生活。它特别关注机器学习模型，以及它们所依赖的算法在多大程度上被创造人工智能的人在本体论、认识论和道德上所采用。该项目的特点是在人工智能公司，学术机构，行业活动和工作以外的空间进行为期一年的参与观察。它还采用采访和小组沙龙讨论与行业成员和他们的对话者在商业，政府和媒体。构建民族志的问题包括：（1）人工智能开发如何成为一种社会、文化和当地特定的实践;（2）人工智能开发人员之间关于人类的话语如何配置人工智能开发和部署的政治利害关系;以及（3）伦理价值观在人工智能系统的开发、批评和人工制品中扮演什么角色？这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How do AI developers reckon with the social impacts of their technologies? This dissertation research explores the front lines of artificial intelligence, where recent advancements have provoked both excitement and concern among industry members and the broader public. By studying how developers respond to these advancements during their day-to-day work, the project documents the emergence of beliefs, norms, and values in the industry. In turn, it shows how a technology industry’s politics and social structure influence its wider benefits and harms. The project’s findings can support the work of researchers in AI safety and ethics seeking to enhance AI’s impacts. The project can also inform the activities of policy makers and activists looking to manage the effects of this emerging technology as well. Results will be disseminated through academic and public media articles, presentations to AI development, safety, and ethics researchers, and a doctoral dissertation.The project uses ethnographic methods to study the work and lives of researchers in AI development, safety, and ethics. It is focused specifically on machine learning models, and to what extent the algorithms that they depend upon are taken up ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically by those who create the AI. The project features one year of participant observation at AI companies, academic institutions, industry events, and spaces outside of work. It also employs interviews and group salon discussions with industry members and their interlocutors in business, government, and the media. The questions structuring the ethnography include: (1) how is AI development a social, cultural, and locally specific practice; (2) how do discourses about the human among AI developers configure the political stakes of AI development and deployment; and (3) what role do ethical values play in the development, critique, and artifacts of AI systems? The project extends scientific understandings of the relationship between technology, humanity, and ethics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.