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.

Find me on Twitter for updates on new episodes, and reach me at editor@thegradient.pub for feedback, ideas, guest suggestions.

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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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