Shaping the development and use of Artificial Intelligence: how human factors and ergonomics expertise can become more pertinent

Abstract

New developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are extensively discussed in public media and scholarly publications. While in many academic disciplines debates on the challenges and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how to best address them have been launched, the human factors and ergonomics (HFE) community has been strangely quiet. I discuss three main areas in which HFE could and should significantly contribute to the socially and economically viable development and use of AI: decisions on automation versus augmentation of human work; alignment of control and accountability for AI outcomes; counteracting power imbalances among AI stakeholders. I then outline actions that the HFE community could undertake to improve their involvement in AI development and use, foremost translating ethical into design principles, strengthening the macro-turn in HFE, broadening the HFE design mindset, and taking advantage of new interdisciplinary research opportunities. Practitioner summary: HFE expertise could and should significantly contribute to the socially and economically viable development and use of AI. Translating ethical into design principles, opening up to broader multi-stakeholder perspectives, and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration within a design science framework are discussed as measures to achieve that.