The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has just launched its Machine Assisted Cognition (MAC) initiative, aimed at developing and demonstrating AI tools that can understand and predict human behavior, with a focus on decision-making.
TRI wants MAC to be scalable, and believes that it is essential to respect the principles of transparency and privacy in the collection and usage of data – we should hope so.
“A key pillar of TRI’s charter is to explore ‘what’s next’ for Toyota, and MAC is another way TRI can apply its AI expertise to help humans perform better,” said TRI chief science officer, Eric Krotkov. “Our vision is to create a human amplification system for Toyota where people and machines work together synergistically to make better predictions, forecasts and business decisions, and do so more quickly.”
Read Also: Toyota Shocks CES With Plan To Build 175-Acre City Of The Future In Japan
In charge of the MAC program will be Senior Director Franziska Bell, whose team will include behavioral scientists, and will have oversight of the Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery (AMDD) program. Bell formerly worked for Uber as Head of Platform Data Science, where she created working teams around forecasting, anomaly detection and conversational AI.
Initially, the MAC team will build and test fundamental capabilities. Once a proof of concept gets developed, the group will then explore specific capabilities that can “support the needs of Toyota users in different parts of the organization.”
On a more philosophical note, TRI also hopes that MAC will contribute to a deeper understanding of human behavior, to the benefit of our entire society. As long as it doesn’t lead to Westworld, we’re all good with it.
