A new video from University Communications, part of its ‘Understood’ series, delves into the question of whether artificial intelligence can replace humans and whether humans can trust AI.

The video highlights the data science academic initiative and the new School of Computer and Data Sciences at the UO. Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and part of the Presidential Initiative in Data Science, is featured in the video. He teaches courses on internet and society and data ethics to both philosophy students and computer science students.

Videographer Chris Larsen worked with Alvarado, eventually focusing on the concept of the black box. The black box illustrates the mystery in machine learning and raises questions of trust in artificial intelligence.

For example, if AI perform a tasks better, cheaper and more accurately than humans, does that mean humans should be replaced with AI? Alvarado says no. At times it’s okay to use AI as a helpful tool, he said, but they should not replace humans. 

Alvarado compares AI to pigeons that have been trained to identify cancer in radiology scans. It turns out that when researchers aggregate the results of pigeons, pigeons actually perform better than AI on identifying cancer. But like AI, pigeons are still a black box. We don’t understand the process.

Alvarado takes that argument a step further by saying people shouldn’t trust either AI or pigeons, but we can trust fruit flies. Fruit fly antenna can detect cancerous cells. That process is understood; it is not opaque.

“I hope this video helps viewers think about AI from a new perspective and ask new questions about these novel tools,” Larsen said. “I had fun animating a pigeon and a fruit fly. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

The ‘Understood’ series is available on the UO’s YouTube channel. Past episodes cover topics such as interpreting music, how icebergs affect the ocean, bionic vision research and more.