Premise

Recently I spent some time thinking about ways in which studying the human side of human-machine systems would be beneficial to build aligned AIs. I discussed these ideas informally and people seemed interested and wanted to know more. Thus, I decided to write a list of research directions for studying humans that could help solve the alignment problem.

The list is non-exhaustive. Also, the intention behind it is not to argue that these research directions are more important than any other but rather to suggest directions to someone with a related background or personal fit in studying humans. There is also a lot of valuable work in AI Strategy that involves studying humans, which I am not familiar with. I wrote this list mostly with Technical AI Safety in mind.

Human-AI Research Fields

Before diving into my suggestions for studying humans with AI Safety in mind, I want to mention some less well-known research fields that study the interactions between human and AI systems in different ways, since I reference some of these below. Leaving aside the usual suspects of psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, other interesting research areas I came across are

Cybernetics

A “transdisciplinary” approach defined by Norbert Wiener in 1948 as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine". It is currently mostly used as a historical reference and a foundational reading. However, there is growing work in integrating cybernetics concepts in current research.

Human-AI Interaction

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is an established field dating back to the 70s. It “studies the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people and computers”. Human-AI Interaction is a recently established sub-field of HCI concerned with studying specifically the interactions between humans and “AI-infused systems”.

Computational Social Science

“Using computers to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. It focuses on investigating social and behavioural relationships and interactions through social simulation, modelling, network analysis, and media analysis”

Collective Intelligence

Defined as “the enhanced capacity that is created when people work together, often with the help of technology, to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas, and insights”

Artificial Social Intelligence

Which some define as “the domain ai

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