Talking to Bots: Symbiotic Agency and the Case of Tay
In 2016, Microsoft launched Tay, an experimental artificial intelligence chat bot. Learning from interactions with Twitter users, Tay was shut down after one day because of its obscene and inflammatory tweets. This article uses the case of Tay to re-examine theories of agency. How did users view the personality and actions of an artificial intelligence […]
The Social Life of Data
SMC Lecture: Gina Neff from TUTV on Vimeo. Dr. Gina Neff, a University of Washington scholar, discusses the ways in which data collected from smart phones and wearable devices fills a gap in healthcare. She touches on how this health information might educate and empower the users who generate it, in this lecture titled “The […]
Engineering Communication in Data Rich Environments
I have been awarded $170,000 from the UW Innovation Fund for the project “Engineering Communication in Data Rich Environments: How do we support innovation in multidisciplinary teams?” Today’s engineers grapple with more data, more people, and less time. Design theory suggests collaborative problem solving leads to innovation, but multidisciplinary projects often fall short of this […]