The Gradient Podcast - Meredith Ringel Morris: Generative AI's HCI Moment

Video Description

Episode 138 I spoke with Meredith Morris (https://x.com/merrierm) about: * The intersection of AI and HCI and why we need more cross-pollination between AI and adjacent fields * Disability studies and AI * Generative ghosts and technological determinism * Developing a useful definition of AGI I didn’t get to record an intro for this episode since I’ve been sick. Enjoy! Meredith is Director for Human-AI Interaction Research for Google DeepMind (https://research.google/people/MeredithRingelMorris/) and an Affiliate Professor in The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and in The Information School at the University of Washington, where she participates in the dub (http://dub.washington.edu/) research consortium. Her work spans the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI), human-centered AI, human-AI interaction, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), social computing, and accessibility. She has been recognized as an ACM Fellow (https://awards.acm.org/award-recipients/morris_6317538) and ACM SIGCHI Academy member (https://sigchi.org/awards/sigchi-award-recipients/2020-sigchi-awards/) for her contributions to HCI. Find me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/spaniel_bashir) for updates on new episodes, and reach me at [email protected] for feedback, ideas, guest suggestions. Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gradient-podcast/id1569777340) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6onNcSqsP6hEEqmZ6TU2g8) | Pocket Casts (https://pca.st/itunes/1569777340) | RSS (https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/265424/s/1354/private/3bbc085c-7aa9-4037-8784-1575653a0438.rss)Follow The Gradient on Twitter (https://twitter.com/gradientpub) Outline: * (00:00) Meredith’s influences and earlier work * (03:00) Distinctions between AI and HCI * (05:56) Maturity of fields and cross-disciplinary work * (09:03) Technology and ends * (10:37) Unique aspects of Meredith’s research direction * (12:55) Forms of knowledge production in interdisciplinary work * (14:08) Disability, Bias, and AI * (18:32) LaMPost and using LMs for writing * (20:12) Accessibility approaches for dyslexia * (22:15) Awareness of AI and perceptions of autonomy * (24:43) The software model of personhood * (28:07) Notions of intelligence, normative visions and disability studies * (32:41) Disability categories and learning systems * (37:24) Bringing more perspectives into CS research and re-defining what counts as CS research * (39:36) Training interdisciplinary researchers, blurring boundaries in academia and industry * (43:25) Generative Agents and public imagination * (45:13) The state of ML conferences, the need for more cross-pollination * (46:42) Prestige in conferences, the move towards more cross-disciplinary work * (48:52) Joon Park Appreciation * (49:51) Training interdisciplinary researchers * (53:20) Generative Ghosts and technological determinism * (57:06) Examples of generative ghosts and clones, relationships to agentic systems * (1:00:39) Reasons for wanting generative ghosts * (1:02:25) Questions of consent for generative clones and ghosts * (1:05:01) Labor involved in maintaining generative ghosts, psychological tolls * (1:06:25) Potential religious and spiritual significance of generative systems * (1:10:19) Anthropomorphization * (1:12:14) User experience and cognitive biases * (1:15:24) Levels of AGI * (1:16:13) Defining AGI * (1:23:20) World models and AGI * (1:26:16) Metacognitive abilities in AGI * (1:30:06) Towards Bidirectional Human-AI Alignment * (1:30:55) Pluralistic value alignment * (1:32:43) Meredith’s perspective on deploying AI systems * (1:36:09) Meredith’s advice for younger interdisciplinary researchers Links: * Meredith’s homepage (https://cs.stanford.edu/~merrie/), Twitter (https://x.com/merrierm), and Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eJsW6W8AAAAJ&hl=en) * Papers * Mediating Group Dynamics through Tabletop Interface Design (https://cs.stanford.edu/~merrie/papers/morris_ieee_cga.pdf) * SearchTogether: An Interface for Collaborative Web Search (https://cs.stanford.edu/~merrie/papers/searchtogether.pdf) * AI and Accessibility: A Discussion of Ethical Considerations (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1908/1908.08939.pdf) * Disability, Bias, and AI (https://ainowinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/disabilitybiasai-2019.pdf) * LaMPost: Design and Evaluation of an AI-assisted Email Writing Prototype for Adults with Dyslexia (https://cs.stanford.edu/~merrie/papers/LaMPost.pdf) * Generative Ghosts (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.01662.pdf) * Levels of AGI (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.02462.pdf) Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe (https://thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4) Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/22882597?utm_source=youtube (video made with https://www.headliner.app)