How to See Eye to Eye With AI - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering

Illustration showing human and AI communication

Imagine directing a robot through a building in a conflict zone. Entering the structure would be too dangerous, and poor signal makes continuous video communication impossible. As a US Army teleoperator searching for mission-critical information, you piece together the fragments by asking the robot a series of spoken questions. Has anyone been here recently? What was this room used for? Do you see signs of foreign occupation?

With near-perfect recall and the capacity to navigate extreme environments, you might have assumed that an AI-assisted robot would be an ideal accomplice. But how can you ensure that it “wants” what you want – that it will identify the exact information you need?

Establishing common ground

At the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), David Traum and Kallirroi Georgila work together to investigate the problem of how two fundamentally different kinds of intelligence – humans and artificial agents – can successfully communicate to achieve shared goals.