(applause)
- Thank you all for coming and welcome to the launch
of Stanford's new Institute for Human-Centered AI.
My 17 years of Stanford's provost were spent at the
center of one of the world's foremost academic communities.
I was in regular dialogue with academic leaders from
the humanities to the hard sciences,
and from economics to the arts.
So it's a little odd that one of the most
consequential conversations of my career
took place in my neighbor's driveway.
It was three years ago, and I was discussing
artificial intelligence with my
friend and colleague Fei-Fei Li.
We agreed that the field's sudden acceleration was exciting,
but that its ultimate future was hard to predict.
Encouraging outcomes were as easy to imagine
as disastrous ones, and the public was taking notice.
We also agreed that any endeavors so clearly capable of
shaping the future had a special obligation to be inclusive.
But like so many technical fields, it was a pretty
homogenous community with backgrounds rarely straying
beyond math and engineering.
And of course it was inordinately white and male.
For technology so intent on reflecting the human experience,
the AI of 2016 captured a surprisingly narrow
range of perspectives.
Then Fei-Fei changed the direction of the conversation.
She wanted to talk about my efforts as Provost to bring
technical insights from the sciences and engineering
to disciplines ranging from the humanities and
medicine and law.
For a long time I had watched the growing divide
between these two worlds, but felt that the
innovations of tech could energize and transform
more traditional fields.
Fei-fei, however, saw the need for the reverse.
Computer science needed a fresh dose of humanity.
Fast forward a couple of years.
The conversations continued, and now included
Fei-Fei's colleagues Chris Manning and James Landay.
They shaped the vision of what was needed
and the perspective soon had a name.
Human-centered AI.
A major institute was proposed, and the University's
visionary leadership endorsed it.
Further shaping took place during monthly meetings,
first organized by Bob King, then formalized as a
task force chaired by Steve Denning,
Reid Hoffman, and Jerry Yang.
Today, Stanford HAI as we call it, is the product of
a growing number of faculty contributors and
far-sighted supporters.
All dedicated to guiding AI toward a better future.
So what exactly is Stanford HAI?
It's a research initiative, certainly, and many avenues of
study are already being explored under its auspices.
We intend to develop new technologies and
prototype new applications.
But it aims to do much more.
It's intended to inform and even shape public policy,
not unlike the many policy institutes found on campus.
Now, we make no claim to have answers to the
many difficult questions raised by AI.
But we're committed to convening the key stakeholders
in an informed, fact-based quest to find those answers.
To do so, we need partners at other universities,
and in industry, government, and civil society.
And because we're situated at one of the world's
most vibrant intellectual communities,
Stanford HAI is tasked with challenging our students
on campus to think about AI in new ways.
But we also intend to promote the human-centered
perspective through ambitious external programs
tailored to the needs of professionals from
government, industry, and the public at large.
Stanford HAI is all these things. Research, policy,
education, and outreach at a global scale with an
emphasis on inclusion and academic cross-pollination.
The colored threads that make up the distinctive high
typeface symbolized human diversity in all of its forms, and
their weaving together reminds us of our common humanity.
We firmly believe that working together,
we can build a better future with AI.
We hope that you will join us.