Autonomy Isn’t Autonomous | ASU KEDtalks®️ featuring Nancy Cooke

[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY J. COOKE: As a teenager, I dreamt of being on my own, free of parental oversight and financial ties. I wanted to be autonomous. I wanted to be independent. I got a job, I found an apartment, and I started to work my way through college. I was so excited. I was living the dream. I was independent. But soon enough, I realized that I could use the help of some roommates, and then I also took my parents up on the occasional offer of a hot meal and the use of their laundry facilities. And then I started thinking, am I really independent? Am I really autonomous? Not exactly. Now, years later, I find myself studying teams.

00:45 - We’re all dependent on others in our social system. Human achievement is based on our collaborative nature. We’re not autonomous, and that’s a good thing. Advances in technology have enabled machines to take on tasks autonomously, and self-driving cars is a good example of that. But if we envision a world in which humans exist and prosper, that autonomy is going to need to be able to work alongside humans as a teammate in areas such as manufacturing, transportation, medicine, space exploration, and in the military.

01:17 - But building these strange teams of humans and artificially intelligent agents and robots requires an appreciation for system science, because how do you get all those moving parts that make up a human artificial intelligent robot team to work together seamlessly without unintended consequences? And new scientific discoveries will need to be made. How can robots best communicate with humans? We need new models of mutual trust and understanding. I am not autonomous, and neither is autonomy. I am interdependent, not independent. I’m embedded in a rich sociotechnical system in which I depend on others. And if we expect robots, AI agents to be in this social system with us, it needs to be developed to be a good teammate. No man nor robot is an island. .