Bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence

Jacob Sherson has received a Semper Ardens grant of DKK 15 million from the Carlsberg Foundation for a project seeking to combine human intuition and computing power. This will provide new opportunities to shape the future of artificial intelligence.

What are the limits of artificial intelligence? Do researchers in artificial intelligence sufficiently incorporate the special human ways of dealing with complex problems? A new Semper Ardens research project "Beyond citizen science: hybrid intelligence" funded by the Carlsberg Foundation will adress this very challenge by involving the general population in the research process. The first part of the project will be carried out over the next few months in collaboration with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) under the heading ‘Danmarks nye superhjerne’ (Denmark’s new super brain).

"In tomorrow's digital world, knowledge will be power. Therefore, it's a problem that much of the knowledge we now have about human behavior is based on small studies and with participants who don’t represent the general population. We will address this problem with large-scale citizen science studies in our new social science super collider infrastructure," says Professor Jacob Sherson, who is affiliated with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University.

Through computer games and the involvement of citizens, researchers will develop a future hybrid intelligence that combines humans’ evolutionarily conditional ability to navigate in complex problems with the ability of algorithms to process large amounts of data. Specifically, thousands of people will contribute to resolving complex problems using specially designed computer games.

“Jacob Sherson’s citizen science approach represents a true Semper Ardens project that will have a major impact, both methodologically and academically, in a number of scientific domains, such as psychology, brain research and sociology. I’m also very excited to see the specific applications of behavioral data, which will make it possible to create a democratic alternative to the secret algorithms that control so much of our behavior on digital media and give rise to polarisation and fake news," says Professor Flemming Besenbacher, Chairman of the Carlsberg Foundation.

Read in Danish here.