How Humans Judge Machines

Organised by

• Department of Economics
• Department of History
• Department of Law
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Technological Change and Society
• Tech

How would you feel about losing your job to a machine? How about a tsunami alert system that fails? Would you react differently to acts of discrimination performed by a machine or a human? How about public surveillance? How Humans Judge Machines compares people’s reactions to actions performed by humans and machines. Using data collected in dozens of experiments, this book reveals the biases that permeate human–machine interactions. Are there conditions in which we judge machines unfairly? Is our judgment of machines affected by the moral dimensions of a scenario? Is our judgment of machines correlated with demographic factors, such as education or gender? Hidalgo and colleagues use hard science to take on these pressing technological questions. Using randomised experiments, they create revealing counterfactuals and build statistical models to explain how people judge AI, and whether we do it fairly. Through original research, they bring us one step closer to understanding the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence. How Humans Judge Machines can be read for free at https://www.judgingmachines.com/ (in print from MIT Press). 

Cesar A. Hidalgo directs the Center for Collective Learning at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Institute (ANITI) at the University of Toulouse. Prior to joining ANITI, he directed the Collective Learning group at MIT. Hidalgo holds a PhD in physics from the University of Notre Dame (US) and is the author of dozens of peer reviewed papers and three books. His latest book is How Humans Judge Machines (MIT Press, 2021).

Links:

• EUI Data protection Policy