Meredith Ringel Morris: Generative AI's HCI Moment

Episode 138

I spoke with Meredith Morris 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 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 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 and ACM SIGCHI Academy member for her contributions to HCI.

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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, Twitter, and Google Scholar

* Papers

* Mediating Group Dynamics through Tabletop Interface Design

* SearchTogether: An Interface for Collaborative Web Search

* AI and Accessibility: A Discussion of Ethical Considerations

* Disability, Bias, and AI

* LaMPost: Design and Evaluation of an AI-assisted Email Writing Prototype for Adults with Dyslexia

* Generative Ghosts

* Levels of AGI

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