Human Specification

I am surrounded by AI. I think about AI. I use AI.

My research touches a number of things under the umbrella of AI: AI alignment, AI agents, foundation models, natural language processing (NLP), human-robot interaction, and helping these autonomous systems make decisions under uncertainty.

Instead of using Stack Overflow these days or making multiple drafts of emails with different possible phrasings, I've turned to asking AI tools for some assistance here.

A large portion of my days include interacting with colleagues, collaborators, close friends in my program. We talk about our thoughts on AI and our research, and where it will head next, whether broadly or scoping our next experiment or project.

My feed on Twitter commonly features new and viral papers, or catching glimpses of what is happening in the frontier labs or about the new startups. Occasionally on my Instagram scrolls, I'll see AI generated content.

But it is important to me that my research (and life) is not just about AI.

When I first started getting involved in robotics research in undergrad, similar to many of the human-robot interaction community, Baymax was (and still is) an inspiration. A robot that was helpful to us (and super kind and smiley, cute, and safe!).

For a class project in undergrad, my project partner and I worked on a dancing robot demo. We got the Baxter robot in simulation (this was during COVID, so we were remote) to be able to react to different BPMs and dance the Macarena. This later spun into me getting involved in a super fun UTRA project that worked towards developing interdisciplinary course at Brown: *Choreorobotics 101*.

The research that I worked on in my senior year of undergrad: *Skill Generalization Via Verbs*, was inspired by human behavior. 1) We can articulate skills/commands via language. 2) We are good at generalization, and so if I am able to do the action of "open" on a door, it's quite easy for us to look at a similar object such as a oven or a window, and be able to apply the same verb. 3) Sometimes we encounter objects that we are less familiar with, and we also can "play around" or try out different things with those objects.

Most of my research experiments or projects I was involved in undergrad really got me thinking deeply about systems that interact with humans collaboratively and safety, and also the importance of looking at human behavior.

Now in my PhD, I work on intersection of topics to make sure that general AI systems are aligned with human values, and personalizable to their preferences and their goals, and that they are safer to use. Although my research interests have developed and broadened quite a bit over the years, the human aspect was always an important part.

But also, my interests are influenced by my life outside of research. I enjoy getting to know people, and building my little mental models of everyone I meet over time and updating my mental notes on everyone here and there, and I like to spend time with others (I've become an extrovert over the years).

People's opinions on AI vary greatly, and this has shifted over the years as Large Language Models (LLMs) progressed and got more capable. I am often asked (as I work on AI and also have an extensive music background) or come across the question about AI consciousness or creativity. It's a loaded question, and I don't I have the full means to answer this. But I think to attempt to answer this question, we have to think about other questions along the lines of: "what we humans consider to be the bar for creativity" or "what is considered to be a truly new thought", which may end up be like asking "what does it mean to be human" or "how do we reason about the world and our experiences".

To build useful and safe AI systems, we need to think about humans: how we will interact with these systems, the impact that they will have on society and our relationships with each other. We are building these systems to help us and benefit society, and as we use these systems more and more, we shouldn't lose sight of thinking about humanity.

Recently, I've had several thought provoking conversations with friends, mentors, and strangers in life about the topic of what it means to be human, especially as AI becomes more integrated into our lives. And I figured I'd write a journal entry about some important interconnected aspects I've experienced.

When I was growing up, dinner time was my favorite. My mom's cooking was amazing, and my parents and I would sit at the dining table and chat about our day while something was playing in the background on the TV (often a sitcom, the news, or some variety music competition).

Dinners were also on the slightly longer side, probably average about 1.5 to 2 hours if I wasn't too busy with homework. I would tell my parents about the things I learned in school that day, recount some funny topics of discussion between my friends and I. Sometimes if things were rough that day, my parents would offer advice or suggestions to me.

My dad would also tell me his best jokes (very much dad jokes) that he told to colleagues at work that day, while my mom and I would roll our eyes and have a good laugh. My mom would also tell me the recipe and cooking instructions of the dish that she cooked that day.

After dinner, if it was a Saturday evening, my parents and I would often watch a movie together. *Lord of the Rings*, *Harry Potter*, *James Bond*, to the *Godfather*. There was a night where I remembered that I was upset about something personal and wanted to take my mind off of it. My parents pulled up their comfy air chair right next to me, passed me a think warm blanket, and watched *Legally Blonde* together with me.

Sure, there are some things that I may ask Claude or ChatGPT, but I'll personally keep away from asking about life advice on those platforms. Even in grad school where I am far from my parents, I still call them often when I'm having dinner (or cooking) and tell them about how things are. Sometimes, I'll decide to ask them about advice about how to handle certain tough situations that I've been in or when I'm super stressed.

And of course, my dad will still tell his dad jokes, and my mom would reiterate the instructions of how to cook steamed fish or her wintermelon meat stews, some of my favorite dishes of hers.

There's something special and comforting about sitcoms.

Yes, they are funny. The iconic 'PIVOT' scene from *Friends*, when Lily was accidentally locked in the car in *Modern Family*, and the entire girls vs boys game night in *Big Bang Theory*.

But there's something about featuring the same group of characters over an extended long period of time as they navigate through various moments of life together. We care about belonging and being part of a community.

In real life, it may not be as easy to maintain such a close friendship with the same group of friends for such an extended time as portrayed in these sitcoms. People may come and go, ebb and flow, in various points in our lives and it's natural. Some may return later on or every few periods in our lives, just like *Janice* in *Friends*.

But there's always going to be still a fondness and a little smile, when I think back to those who I was close with in previous parts of my lives, and recount some of the little silly shenanigans we were up to back then to friends here.

I still remember that day in undergrad where a friend and I were screaming in my room because we had just (with a handheld vacuum), vacuumed up a spider, and needed a way to get the very much still alive spider, out of the vacuum.

There are some best friends from high school after graduation that I haven't seen in a while. We met up in California recently. We yapped about our life updates and about being grad students, and it was as though we never spent that much time and distance apart.

I'm also a big texter. I'm happy to get a text and respond to make plans or update each other on how we're doing.

But sometimes we encounter a time where there's a tough situation to reason through or there's a message that someone might want to get across that is hard to articulate.

Once in a while, I'll see a text that is probably drafted by an LLM. The language is slightly a bit too formal, a bit wordy, and extremely cautious, and a bit too perfect, and out of distribution for my mental model of them.

And I'll feel torn.

Maybe I should feel appreciative about them being wanting to not accidentally say something incorrect. But at the same time, I feel like I don't get their true thoughts or maybe they're not invested enough.

There are times that I asked a sorority sister to help me draft a text or a mentor to check my professional emails before sending them out. I personally don't think it's the same as asking a LLM to do it, but maybe some other people disagree.

I do prefer chatting face to face if I can. I call with some of my sorority sisters often, friends from undergrad who are in a different state, or the (increasingly) amount of friends who have moved to work in the Bay post graduation.

At the start of undergrad after moving away from home, I missed having cozy dinners with my parents. While the Ratty at Brown didn't have the greatest food, it sure was the greatest place for me to replicate dinner time, by doing "Keeney fam dinners". My friends and I would agree to have dinner together every night (which was super easy in first year since all of us had to be on meal plans).

The nine of us would be at a single roundtable bickering, talking about what we learned in our classes, and funny moments from our day. One of the fondest memories I had from those dinners is that a friend recently started dating someone new, and she brought them to come eat with us at dinner. It was of course, hilariously awkward at first. A friend was like an awkward uncle, casually asking more after learning about the boyfriend's tennis hobbies and his potential concentrations. The remainder of us acted like various protective or bickering siblings. He eventually felt welcome, and his joined us for many more dinners that semester.

I'm glad that my grad dorm holds a "coffee hour" once every week. I also sometimes hold my own "tea time" sessions in my room and invite friends over. We would talk about our research, our lives, offer each other advice, and spend time listening to each other's stories and tea. The bickering, teasing, laughing, stand up comedy, and good food is always a time I look forward to every week.

I joke pretty often that some things in life feel like scenes from a sitcom, filled with good (or impactful memories) with the close knit community and the funny drama.

I'm glad for the good memories, for my communities that I've been involved with, and for the special bonds I've formed with people other the years.

I'd like to think that I am also a curious person.

I like to get to know people I meet, and hear about their lives, the lessons they learned, and about their hobbies, and their thoughts about topics during late nights.

And I've enjoyed that over the course of my PhD, I've been able to explore my interests and try out or intersect between various topics so far. I've been able to to learn something new (whether a skill or a concept) for each project that I've worked on or collaborated with others on, or had fascinating conversations with.

A lot of my current research is inspired by thinking about how humans interact with each other. 1) We often clarify their goals or intent through multi-turn interactions/conversations. 2) People can also be quite indecisive or change/adapt their goals over time (I am quite an indecisive person myself). 3) It would be useful to have a model of what we think the other person would want/what they think. And my recent work attempts to formalize all of this and be able to incorporate these ideas to help AI agents better align with humans given a complex preference they want help with.

I'm also a musician.

I've played piano since I was five. I spent a short time during middle and high school learning the violin and various other percussion instruments.

I've performed a lot on the piano as a soloist, an accompanist, and a chamber musician. I've also been part of my high school orchestra, as a violinist. And so growing up, I've learned a lot about how to collaborate and play with others, how to have productive yet fun and enjoyable rehearsals, to perform or create some beautiful music together.

I started composition back in middle school. My first composition stemmed from an assignment where we had to create 30 seconds of music to go with a short section of an animation. And since then, I've enjoyed using music and various instruments to help tell a story, often drawing from my personal memories and feelings that I've experienced.

For my music honors thesis of undergrad, I composed a four movement symphony where each movement represented a year of undergrad, and drew upon a few themes from my previous compositions from high school. My advisors encouraged me to try some techniques a bit outside of the my usual compositional comfort zone. It felt surprisingly very freeing to me to write an atonal 12 tone theme to represent the COVID era that started in our first year of undergrad.

I joked recently to a bunch of my friends that I feel like I have enough content from my life or from friends that I could write a musical. Unfortunately, I don't have time currently, but in the future, that would definitely be a very fun endeavor!

And music is also a great outlet to express myself or some of my feelings. There are times where I am angry or frustrated, and the Prokofiev 3rd Piano Sonata just happens to be a great piece to play through when that is the case.

My music profs and I had many conversations about AI. I've heard about their about some of their first times interacting with ChatGPT and testing its ability to write a short biography paragraph about them, and seeing its ability to hallucinate facts about them. I've seen videos of robots that now can play the piano and the violin.

Our piano coach this semester talked a lot about how an important difference between an AI and a human is that we need to take breaths. It influences things like how we shape phrases in our music and the concept of time when we play. And good chamber music comes as she often said, when "we breathe together".

One of my favorite feelings out there, is the happiness and satisfaction after coming out from a great lesson/rehearsal or final performance, or looking at a score that I've created.

Being creative and being able to tell a story or articulate thoughts is fun, whether through music, or through our tea time stories, or through these short creative writings that I casually do.

I hope that more people continue to think broadly about: 1) how to make these systems safe and good responsible tools for humans, and we may need a good understanding of what we want/how we function/how we interact to do so, 2) effects of AI and technology (or how we can improve this technology for) on our relationships and behaviors with other humans and on society as a whole.