AI Science and Engineering: Societal and Environmental Impact
Is “AI Science and Engineering” an un upcoming scientific discipline that can fuse AI, brain and mind studies and social engineering?
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As Artificial Intelligence (AI) studies and research flourish worldwide, it is worth debating whether we already observe the birth of a new discipline in the exact sciences that goes beyond the classical specializations of Computer Science (CS) and Electrical/Computer Engineering (ECE). It is natural that AI and its various domains, notably Machine Learning, will share methods and curriculum with both CS and ECE. However, this is not really enough to move from our current Data/Information Society to a Knowledge Society. We certainly need a fusion of AI with brain and mind studies, notably Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and Psychology. Furthermore, AI has a huge impact on both our society and environment. We already observe strong AI applications in social engineering domains, e.g., on recommendation systems, on-line marketing, social media, meta-societies and fake news. It is natural that such applications will influence the AI Science and Engineering discipline itself. Furthermore, as humans consist of matter and live in a spatiotemporally evolving environment, life and environment studies, e.g., on matter complexity, can have a fundamental impact on both the understanding of life and human intelligence and on the development of AI. However, as students cannot be polymaths, are all the above issues too many to fit in one scientific discipline? Is there a danger that we sacrifice scientific depth to interdisciplinarity? Can we envisage other sister-disciplines, e.g., Mind and Social Science and Engineering and/or Bioscience and Engineering that can address students with interests and background in Liberal Arts and Sciences or Biology/Medicine/Health Sciences?