  Labeling data is an important step in the supervised machine learning
lifecycle. It is a laborious human activity comprised of repeated decision
making: the human labeler decides which of several potential labels to apply to
each example. Prior work has shown that providing AI assistance can improve the
accuracy of binary decision tasks. However, the role of AI assistance in more
complex data-labeling scenarios with a larger set of labels has not yet been
explored. We designed an AI labeling assistant that uses a semi-supervised
learning algorithm to predict the most probable labels for each example. We
leverage these predictions to provide assistance in two ways: (i) providing a
label recommendation and (ii) reducing the labeler's decision space by focusing
their attention on only the most probable labels. We conducted a user study
(n=54) to evaluate an AI-assisted interface for data labeling in this context.
Our results highlight that the AI assistance improves both labeler accuracy and
speed, especially when the labeler finds the correct label in the reduced label
space. We discuss findings related to the presentation of AI assistance and
design implications for intelligent labeling interfaces.
