Dr. Christopher Miller gives AAAI Fall Symposium address

Dr. Christopher Miller gave an invited address to the AAAI Fall Symposium on Human Interaction with Biologically-Inspired Swarms which took place in Washington D.C. in December. Dr. Miller spoke about the pros and cons of “true” swarms (which he defined as acting in accordance with an innate set of “instincts” or “source code” and not accepting any explicit tasking instructions) and contrasted them with explicit delegation approaches and adaptable automation in which explicit tasking instructions are a key feature. “The primary difference”, he claimed, “is the degree of 'controllability': swarms do what they do with little attention and workload required from a human supervisor. Insofar as we can find or create conditions in which they’re doing that..., that’s great… but we don’t have a great track record of controlling biological swarms, so perhaps some more explicit instructability will be desirable.”