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CHCI Guest Speaker: Ray Hong

October 25, 2023

Ray Hong is the Fall semester guest speaker in the CHCI Speaker Series. His talk is on Friday, December 1 (1-2 pm) in Gilbert Place, Room 2124.


Alignable AIs: Aligning the Ways that AIs Work based on the Ways Humans think the AIs should Work

Sungsoo Ray Hong's research mission is toward realizing Alignable AIs. Research in Alignable AIs aims to close the gaps between our mental models and AIs through novel interactive designs and human-AI collaboration systems rigorously rooted in human-centered design approaches. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Sciences at George Mason University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, Human-Centered Design and Engineering.

As the use of AIs explosively expands in everyday technology use, understanding when the AIs expose vulnerabilities that do not match our mental model and how we can steer their behavior in those cases is becoming crucial. The first part of this talk will introduce how we can understand the vulnerability insights of computer vision models and more directly adjust the models with the insights using local explanations. Another direction in Alignable AIs is to understand how to determine the specific type of users and the task to identify AI can be applied to their settings to make designs that can enhance their productivity. In this direction, we will discuss FlatMagic, a Human-AI Collaboration design designed to support comic artists' colorization process. Finally, the presenter hopes to discuss with audiences how we can apply XAI techniques, human-in-the-loop, and human-AI collaboration principles to move our interactive solution forward in better supporting marginalized populations or highly professional and specialized user groups.