Submitted by Rachel Gardner on Tue, 03/09/2024 - 15:41
Professor Yvonne Rogers, Director of the Interaction Centre at UCL, will be our speaker for the 2024 Wheeler Lecture. 'Supercharging the human mind with AI' will take place here in the William Gates Building at 3 pm on Wednesday 23 October.
Please register if you would like to attend.
Abstract:
"Since the early 2020s there has been a call to arms for making AI systems more human-centred. What this means is widening the AI agenda from being largely technical in its aspirations to one that is concerned with humans and, more generally, with societal needs. A core part of this is a move towards responsible AI, that is reliable, competent and trustworthy. My vision is more radical: exploring how human-centred AI can empower us to achieve ever greater feats by developing new AI 'supertools' that don’t just make our tasks more efficient but expand our minds, daring us to think differently, while at the same time helping us break through the barriers that often stall or prevent creative leaps.
"An overarching goal is to design AI that augments what we do by suggesting, prompting, conjuring up, counter-arguing, nudging, probing and even acting as a sparring partner or a form of super-ego. In the Wheeler Lecture I will describe my current research, which attempts to open up people’s minds more through designing technology with them in mind." Prof Yvonne Rogers.
Our speaker:
Yvonne Rogers is the director of the Interaction Centre at UCL (UCLIC), deputy head of department for Computer Science and a Professor of Interaction Design. Her research is in the areas of human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing and interaction design. Her current research focuses on how human behaviour is being impacted and augmented through the design and adoption of new technologies. She is particularly interested in how human-centred applications of AI can be developed that benefit society.
Central to her work is a critical stance towards how visions, theories and frameworks shape the fields of HCI, cognitive science and AI. 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.
In 2022 she was awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Research Award and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. Other awards include the Royal Society Robin Milner Medal (2022) and a MRC Suffrage and Science Award (2020) for being one of the leading women in 'mathematics & computing’. She was also awarded a chair of excellence from the University of Bremen (2020-2025). This year she was elected as an international member of the American National Academy of Engineering.
- For those who can't attend in-person, we will also be livestreaming the lecture. The link to join virtually will be posted nearer the time.
