Experts working in artificial intelligence, from technological to public policy roles, discuss this turning point in AI and what it means for the future
ANN ARBOR—It may feel like artificial intelligence was just invented with all the hype surrounding ChatGPT and other technologies built on large language models, but six Michigan experts explain how AI has been active in our lives for years—and their hopes and concerns for the future.
AI in society: A look into the field
AI can be much more than a chatbot. Maggie Makar, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, builds predictive models that encode cause and effect relationships rather than discovering associations.
Joyce Chai, professor of computer science and engineering, builds robotic systems that can understand and act on natural language—basically the way we speak normally.
And Rada Mihalcea, the Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, focuses on how to design AI to help human workers, with one current project providing feedback to counselors.
They offer perspectives on the promise of AI—how it might assist us with both physical and cognitive tasks, and detect wrongdoing on the part of corporations.