Google’s plans a big research project aimed at making artificial intelligence more useful.

The search giant debuted an initiative on Monday that brings together various Google researchers to study how people interact with software powered by AI technologies like machine learning.

Companies like Facebook (fb) and Google (goog) have been using AI to improve tasks like quickly translating languages and recognizing objects in pictures. But the technology has the potential to be able to do more.

The problem for companies like Google is to figure out more uses for AI beyond simply improving existing products and create entirely new products based on AI.

One way Google hopes the project, called PAIR (short for People plus AI Research), will lead to more compelling uses of AI is to “focus on the ‘human side,’” Google researchers Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas wrote in a blog post. They want to figure out how and where to best use it from a human standpoint—and not just simply create AI-powered software for its own sake.

“We don't have all the answers—that's what makes this interesting research—but we have some ideas about where to look,” the two researchers wrote.

Some of PAIR’s goals include looking at how professionals like doctors, designers, farmers, and musicians could use AI to “aid and augment” their work. The researchers did not mention how exactly PAIR will do accomplish this in the Monday announcement, but Google has been already looking at how AI can aid specific industries like healthcare through its DeepMind business unit, for example.

The initiative also hopes to discover ways to “ensure machine learning is inclusive, so everyone can benefit from breakthroughs in AI.” Left unsaid is the fact that big companies like Google and Facebook are hiring many of the top leaders in areas like deep learning, which has led to some academics questioning whether big companies are hoarding AI talent and failing to share breakthroughs in AI to increase their own profits.

The researchers also wrote that PAIR would create AI tools and guidelines for developers that would make it easier to build AI-powered software that’s easier of troubleshooting if something goes wrong. One of the ways AI-powered software is different from traditional varieties is that conventional testing and debugging methods fail to work on AI software that constantly changes based on the data it ingests.

谷歌计划开展一个大型研究项目，从而让人工智能变得更加有用。

这家搜索引擎巨头于本周一提出了倡议，要联合谷歌众多研究人员之力，探索人类如何与机器学习等人工智能技术支持的软件进行互动。

Facebook和谷歌已经在使用人工智能提高任务效率，例如迅速翻译语言，或识别图片中的物体。不过这项技术有潜力做更多事情。

对谷歌这类公司而言，在单纯地改善现有的人工智能产品和推出全新产品之外，他们要解决的难题是想出人工智能的更多用途。

谷歌的研究人员马丁·沃登伯格和费尔南达·维埃加斯在博客上表示，公司希望这个名为PAIR（人类加人工智能研究，People plus AI Research的简称）的项目能够让人工智能在“专注于人性方面”拥有更多引人注目的用途。他们想要搞清从人类的角度来看，在哪些地方可以如何最好地利用人工智能技术，而不单纯是开发人工智能软件。

两位研究者写道：“我们还不知道所有的答案，这就是这项研究的有趣之处，不过我们对于探究的方向有了一些想法。”

PAIR的目标包括研究怎样让医生、设计师、农民、音乐家等专业人士使用人工智能来“协助和增强”他们的工作。研究人员在周一的通告中，没有明确提到PAIR将如何做到这一点，但是谷歌已经在研究人工智能如何通过其DeepMind来协助医疗等特定行业了。

这项倡议还希望研究“确保机器学习的包容性，从而使每个人都能从人工智能的突破中获益”的办法。而没有说明的是，谷歌和Facebook等大型公司正在招聘深化学习等领域的顶尖领导者，这导致一些学者质疑这些大公司是否在囤积人工智能的人才，却为了自身利润而不将人工智能领域的突破成果拿出来共享。

研究人员还写道，PAIR将会为开发商创造人工智能工具和指南，让他们更易于开发人工智能软件，一旦出现错误也更容易解决。人工智能软件与传统软件的差别之一，在于常规测试和故障调试对它们都不适用，因为根据它们获取的数据不同，软件也会不断发生变化。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正