front matter
With machine learning now deployed widely in many industry sectors, artificial intelligence systems are in daily contact with human systems and human beings. Most people have noticed some of the user-facing consequences. Machine learning can either improve people’s lives, such as with the speech recognition and natural language understanding of a helpful voice assistant, or it can annoy or even actively harm humans, with examples ranging from annoyingly lingering product recommendations to résumé review systems that are systematically biased against women or under-represented ethnic groups. Rather than thinking about artificial intelligence operating in isolation, the pressing need this century is for the exploration of human-centered artificial intelligence—that is, building AI technology that effectively cooperates and collaborates with people, and augments their abilities.