Abstract:

In this talk, I will argue that to make AI methods relevant and trusted for pressing societal problems, we need to bring neural methods of LLMs and symbolic methods together. Furthermore, one can strike a balance between generality and control using a risk model as the driver and the well-understood dual process theory (DPT) from cognitive psychology as the underlying architectural mechanism. DPT distinguishes between two modes of thought: System 1, which refers to fast, intuitive, and automatic processes, and System 2, characterized by slow, deliberate, and logical reasoning. We have been working on an implementation for it called Slow and Fast Thinking in AI (SOFAI).

The talk will begin by contextualizing human-AI collaboration use-cases in two trust-sensitive domains. We will then introduce our approach for assessing AI using a blackbox, causal framework, and issuing trust certificates implemented in the ARC tool. Then, we will discuss our rule-based SafeChat framework to create reliable chatbots with safety and usability considerations. Next, we will introduce SOFAI and how it has helped combine LLM-based AI as S1 and rule-based AI as S2 together for superior results. Finally, we will outline how SOFAI may be extended for chatbots balancing benefit with cost of risks. The talk will demonstrate the SOFAI platform, ARC tool, and SafeChat based chatbots.

Short Bio: Biplav Srivastava is a Professor of Computer Science at the AI Institute and Department of Computer Science at the University of South Carolina which he joined in 2020 after two decades in industrial research. He directs the 'AI for Society' group which is investigating how to enable people to make rational decisions despite the real world complexities of poor data, changing goals and limited resources by augmenting their cognitive limitations with technology. Dr. Biplav Srivastava's expertise is in Artificial Intelligence (reasoning, representation, learning and human-AI interaction), Services (process automation, composition), and Sustainability (governance - elections, water, traffic, health, power). His contributions have led to many science firsts and high-impact commercial innovations valued over billions of dollars, 200+ papers and 75+ US patents issued, and awards for papers, demos and hacks. More details about his group and him are at, respectively, https://ai4society.github.io/ and
https://sites.google.com/site/biplavsrivastava/