On some Foundational Aspects of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence

TL;DR

This paper explores the foundational concepts of Human-Centered AI by defining HCAI agents and their core components, aiming to clarify the term and bridge technical and non-technical discussions.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of HCAI agents and identifies five key components, providing a foundational framework for understanding human-centered AI systems.

Findings

Defines HCAI agents and their components

Identifies five main conceptual components of HCAI agents

Provides a framework linking technical and non-technical perspectives

Abstract

The burgeoning of AI has prompted recommendations that AI techniques should be "human-centered". However, there is no clear definition of what is meant by Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, or for short, HCAI. This paper aims to improve this situation by addressing some foundational aspects of HCAI. To do so, we introduce the term HCAI agent to refer to any physical or software computational agent equipped with AI components and that interacts and/or collaborates with humans. This article identifies five main conceptual components that participate in an HCAI agent: Observations, Requirements, Actions, Explanations and Models. We see the notion of HCAI agent, together with its components and functions, as a way to bridge the technical and non-technical discussions on human-centered AI. In this paper, we focus our analysis on scenarios consisting of a single agent operating in dynamic environments in presence of humans.