Carnegie Mellon University

Improving Decision Making using AI to Benefit Society

The AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) brings together AI and social sciences researchers to develop human-centric AI for societal good that harnesses the power of data and improved understanding of human decisions to create better and more trusted choices.

AI-SDM: AI, Social Sciences, Use CasesOur Mission

We develop AI to augment human decision-making in societal domains such as public health and disaster management that require complex, often life-saving, decisions to be made under uncertain, dynamic, and resource-constrained circumstances, while also accounting for people’s perceptions of risk, trust and equity. Using data-driven recommendations, counterfactual reasoning, and personalized interventions, we enable public health and emergency management organizations to make effective and ethical decisions that are socially accepted. We are also training and upskilling the workforce at the intersection of AI and social sciences through targeted engagement with high schools, community colleges, universities, corporations, and government partners, all while creating public awareness about AI's potential to positively impact society.

Aarti Singh“AI-SDM will fundamentally advance and bridge the gap between human and autonomous decision making to create hybrid human-AI decision systems that leverage AI capability while ensuring social acceptance. It will also train the next generation of workforce trained at the intersection of AI and social sciences.”

Aarti Singh
AI-SDM Director

Cleotilde Gonzalez"Our work at the AI-SDM will contribute the foundational research required to accurately predict human choices under conditions of uncertainty, time constraints, and temporal dynamics. We will construct the future of experimental and computational cognitive decision science while promoting equity and fairness through human-AI complementarity."

Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez
AI-SDM Co-Director