The Human Values Project

Isaac S. Kohane
Proceedings of the 4th Machine Learning for Health Symposium, PMLR 259:14-18, 2025.

Abstract

Alignment of AI models to ensure that they are safe and useful decision-aids or decision-makers in human society is close to the top of the technical concerns of many if not most major AI deployment efforts. Here I explore a class of categorical decisions, triage, for which AI models are already being used in medicine. I use this to motivate the urgent need for an international Human Values Project (HVP) that will be at least as hungry for empirical data as any existing international project. A major component of the HVP will be the Clinical Decision Dynamics Study that captures descriptive and normative decisions across a wide range of clinical context and from highly diverse, lay and professional perspectives. Along the way, there are important preliminary studies that the AI (and medicine) community should embrace.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v259-kohane25a, title = {The Human Values Project}, author = {Kohane, Isaac S.}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th Machine Learning for Health Symposium}, pages = {14--18}, year = {2025}, editor = {Hegselmann, Stefan and Zhou, Helen and Healey, Elizabeth and Chang, Trenton and Ellington, Caleb and Mhasawade, Vishwali and Tonekaboni, Sana and Argaw, Peniel and Zhang, Haoran}, volume = {259}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {15--16 Dec}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v259/main/assets/kohane25a/kohane25a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v259/kohane25a.html}, abstract = {Alignment of AI models to ensure that they are safe and useful decision-aids or decision-makers in human society is close to the top of the technical concerns of many if not most major AI deployment efforts. Here I explore a class of categorical decisions, triage, for which AI models are already being used in medicine. I use this to motivate the urgent need for an international Human Values Project (HVP) that will be at least as hungry for empirical data as any existing international project. A major component of the HVP will be the Clinical Decision Dynamics Study that captures descriptive and normative decisions across a wide range of clinical context and from highly diverse, lay and professional perspectives. Along the way, there are important preliminary studies that the AI (and medicine) community should embrace.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T The Human Values Project %A Isaac S. Kohane %B Proceedings of the 4th Machine Learning for Health Symposium %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2025 %E Stefan Hegselmann %E Helen Zhou %E Elizabeth Healey %E Trenton Chang %E Caleb Ellington %E Vishwali Mhasawade %E Sana Tonekaboni %E Peniel Argaw %E Haoran Zhang %F pmlr-v259-kohane25a %I PMLR %P 14--18 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v259/kohane25a.html %V 259 %X Alignment of AI models to ensure that they are safe and useful decision-aids or decision-makers in human society is close to the top of the technical concerns of many if not most major AI deployment efforts. Here I explore a class of categorical decisions, triage, for which AI models are already being used in medicine. I use this to motivate the urgent need for an international Human Values Project (HVP) that will be at least as hungry for empirical data as any existing international project. A major component of the HVP will be the Clinical Decision Dynamics Study that captures descriptive and normative decisions across a wide range of clinical context and from highly diverse, lay and professional perspectives. Along the way, there are important preliminary studies that the AI (and medicine) community should embrace.
APA
Kohane, I.S.. (2025). The Human Values Project. Proceedings of the 4th Machine Learning for Health Symposium, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 259:14-18 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v259/kohane25a.html.

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