Yvonne Rogers "Out of Our Minds: What is AI Doing to Us and for Us?"

Abstract: The phrase ‘out of our minds’ refers to how we offload various aspects of our cognitive tasks through writing, drawing, talking and so on. It can also help us articulate our half-baked ideas, partially-solved problems, generate new ideas and construct plans. AI is the latest technological tool that we use to do this. However, it is a very different kind of beast to the armoury of previously used computer-based tools. GenAI can amplify human cognition in extraordinary ways but sometimes at the expense of reducing the cognitive effort required to think, write, analyse, code, decide, and create, for ourselves. This can result in a paradox of effort where the extent to which we externalise is reduced leading to less satisfaction. Simply put, when we make the effort ourselves to perform a task it can be more rewarding than when we get AI to do it for us. How can we design AI tools to make our work more effortful (rather than less) and in doing so more rewarding? In my talk, I will describe the research I have been doing investigating how best to extend human minds that can be both rewarding and challenging: enabling us to reason and make decisions more systematically through reflecting on our goals and intent. Finally, I ask what next? As we move ever more towards adopting agentic AI how will we be augment organizational work that can support shared workflows and collaborative decision-making that will enable society to flourish?

Bio: Yvonne Rogers is a Professor of Interaction Design at University College London. Her research is concerned with designing interactive technologies that empower humans. Her current focus is developing human-centred AI tools to think and reflect with. Central to her work is a critical stance towards how visions, theories and frameworks shape the fields of HCI, cognitive science and ubiquitous computing. She been instrumental in promulgating new theories (e.g., external cognition), alternative methodologies (e.g., in the wild studies) and far-reaching research agendas (e.g., “Being Human” manifesto) and has pioneered an approach to innovation and ubiquitous learning. She has received various awards including being elected as an international member of the American National Academy of Engineering, the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Research Award, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Robin Milner Medal for computer science. She was also awarded a Chair of Excellence from the University of Bremen. She is one of the authors of the definitive textbook on Interaction Design and HCI now in its 6th edition, that has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into many languages.