Article

Machine behavior needs to be an academic discipline

MIT Media Lab / Scalable Cooperation

By Iyad Rahwan and Manuel Cebrian

What if physiologists were the only people who study human behavior at all scales: from how the human body functions, to how social norms emerge, to how the stock market functions, to how we create, share, and consume culture? What if neuroscientists were the only people tasked with studying criminal behavior, designing educational curricula, and devising policies to fight tax evasion?

Despite their growing influence on our lives, our study of AI agents is conducted this way—by a very specific group of people. Those scientists who create AI agents—namely, computer scientists and roboticists—are almost exclusively the same scientists who study the behavior of AI agents.

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