Roots and Requirements for Collaborative AIs

The vision of AI collaborators has long been a staple of stories and science fiction, where artificial agents understand nuances of collaboration and human communication. They assist their human partners and teams and have special talents. Government advisory groups and leaders in AI have advocated for years that AIs should be human compatible and effective collaborators. Nonetheless, robust AIs that collaborate like talented people remain out of reach. The simpler dream of effective information tools that augment human intelligence (IA) has its roots in the 1960s and helped to drive an information technology revolution. With the vast increase in hybrid and remote work since the COVID pandemic, the benefits and requirements for better coordination, collaboration, and communication are in focus for the workplace. Many factors (such as the costs of homes near work) are impeding a mass return to in-person work at the office. Are human-like AI teammates part of a solution? If we just need better tools for collaboration, how artificially intelligent (AI) could and should these tools be? This position paper reviews the arc of technology and calls by others for human-machine teaming. It draws on earlier research in psychology and the social sciences about what human-like collaboration actually requires. This paper argues that current mainstream AI cannot produce robust, intelligent, and human-compatible collaborators. It sets a context for a second paper that proposes exploring a radical shift in technology and methodology for creating resilient, intelligent, and human-compatible AIs (Stefik & Price, 2023). The aspirational goal is that such AIs would learn, share what they learn, and collaborate to achieve high standards.