Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth
“Using AI for Social Good: Key Research Challenges, Applications, and Results.”
Jones Seminars on Science, Technology, and Society.
Dr. Milind Tambe, Founding Co-director, CAIS Center for AI in Society;
Professor of Computer Science and Industrial Systems Engineering
University of Southern California; Co-Founder and Director of Research, Avata Intelligence (avata.ai).
January 19, 2018.
Discussions about the future negative consequences of AI sometimes drown out discussions of the current accomplishments and future potential of AI in helping us solve complex societal problems. At the USC Center for AI in Society, CAIS, our focus is on advancing AI research in tackling wicked problems in society. This talk will highlight the goals of CAIS and three areas of ongoing work. First, I will focus on the use of AI for assisting low-resource communities, such as homeless youth. Harnessing the social networks of such youth, I will outline our advances in influence maximization algorithms to help more effectively spread health information, such as for reducing risk of HIV infections. These algorithms have been piloted in homeless shelters in Los Angeles, and have shown significant improvements over traditional methods. I will also outline our efforts in advancing AI techniques for substance abuse prevention in this population. Second, I will outline the use of AI for protection of forests, fish, and wildlife; learning models of adversary behavior allows us to predict poaching activities and plan effective patrols to deter them; I will discuss concrete results from tests in national parks in Uganda that have led to removal of snares and arrests of poachers, potentially saving endangered animals. Finally, I will focus on the challenge of AI for public safety and security, specifically for effective security resource allocation. I will also briefly discuss our “security games” framework — based on computational game theory — which has led to decision aids that are in actual daily use by agencies such as the US Coast Guard, the US Federal Air Marshals Service and local law enforcement agencies to assist the protection of ports, airports, flights, and other critical infrastructure. I will also highlight a number of other projects at CAIS, and we expect these and other future projects at CAIS to continue to illustrate the significant potential that AI has for social good.
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