Carrie J. Cai

I am a Staff Research Scientist in Google's Responsible AI division and Manager / Area Lead of Human-AI Interaction in Google's People+AI Research group (PAIR). My research aims to improve human+AI outcomes, with a particular focus on human interaction with Large Language Models and Controllable AI.

Previously, I earned a PhD in Computer Science at MIT CSAIL's User Interface Design group, where I created interactive systems for wait-learning, which has been deployed to thousands of people and publicized in TechCrunch, The Boston Globe, and MIT News. 

Before that, I earned an M.A. in Education and a B.A. in Human Biology at Stanford University. During a career transition to Computer Science at UC Berkeley, I helped develop Berkeley's first introductory CS course for non-majors. I feel that it's never too late to learn computer science, and that some of the world's best innovations come from the humanities powered by computing! 

News

July, 2023

Serving on the Pulitzer Prize Board advisory panel on generative AI

April-May, 2023

Generative Agents featured on NBC News and TechCrunch 

May, 2023

MakerSuite launches at Google I/O

April, 2023

Keynote talk at ACM CHI (Trust and Reliance in Human-AI Teams)

October, 2022

Keynote talk at IEEE VIZ (Visualization in Biomedical AI)

March, 2022

"PromptMaker: Prompt-based Prototyping with Large Language Models" received Best Case Study Honorable Recognition at ACM CHI

November, 2020

Wrote up Tips for Applying to CS Grad School from "Non-traditional" (non-STEM) Backgrounds

October, 2020

Interviewed with MIT Technology Review about the importance of making AI more controllable by end-users (w/ Anna Huang)

March, 2020

Keynote talk at ACM IUI (Explainable Smart Systems for Algorithmic Transparency in Emerging Technologies)

March, 2020

Wrote a Google AI blogpost about how to make machine learning frameworks more accessible to developers who are "non-specialists" or new to the field of ML.

December, 2019

Our intern Ryan Louie's paper on human-AI music co-creation has been accepted at CHI. Congrats Ryan!

August, 2019

Spoke at Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD) seminar about "Human-AI Interaction in Medicine and Beyond."

August, 2019

Wrote a Google AI blogpost on human-centric tools in medical similar-image-search.

You can also read more about it on TechCrunch.

August, 2019

"Hello AI" paper on onboarding doctors to AI accepted at CSCW.

Paper on software developers learning machine learning accepted at VL/HCC.

June, 2019

Welcoming PAIR summer interns Ryan Louie (Northwestern) and Qian Yang (CMU)!

April, 2018

Human-centered medical AI tools paper received CHI best paper honourable mention.

Example-based machine learning explanations paper awarded best short paper at IUI.

Dec, 2018

Paper on human-centered medical AI tools accepted to CHI 2019

Paper on example-based machine learning explanations accepted to IUI 2019

Nov, 2018

Serving on the CHI 2019 Program Committee

May, 2018

Paper on TCAV (new ML interpretability method) accepted to ICML 2018

Oct, 2017

Started as an HCI Research Scientist at Google

May, 2017

Received "Excellent Reviewer Award" at CHI 2017

Apr, 2017

Defended PhD Thesis!

Dec, 2016

Journal paper on WaitSuite accepted to TOCHI 2017.

Jun - Aug, 2016

Visiting student at the Stanford HCI group.

Feb 9, 2016

CHI 2016 paper on microtask chains won a Best Paper Honorable Mention award.

Dec 21, 2015

Serving on the Program Committee for CHI 2016 Late-Breaking Work.

Dec 15, 2015

Full paper on microtask chains accepted to CHI 2016.

Nov 10, 2015

Attended the Rising Stars workshop for aspiring female researchers

Nov 8, 2015

Attended the Doctoral Symposium at UIST 2015.

Jul 29, 2015

Gave DUB seminar talk at the University of Washington. | video

Jun - Sep, 2015

Summer internship at Microsoft Research, working on micro-productivity.

Apr 24, 2015

Presented wait-learning at CHI 2015 in Seoul, Korea.

Apr 23, 2015

Congrats to Anji Ren (my undergrad mentee) who won 2nd place in the CHI 2015 student research competition for her pull-to-learn project!

Dec 15, 2014

Full paper on wait-learning accepted to CHI 2015.

Oct 9, 2014

Presented my research at the Grace Hopper Conference PhD Forum in HCI

Apr 27 - May 1, 2014

Attended CHI 2014 in Toronto, Canada. Presented our work-in-progress paper on wait-learning.

Mar 20, 2014

My story of how I became a computer scientist was featured in Khan Academy's Meet the Computing Professional series

Aug 25 - Aug 31, 2013

Attended SLaTe 2013 and Interspeech 2013. Presented Enhancing Speech Recognition in Fast-Paced Educational Games using Contextual Cues

June, 2013

Submitted my masters thesis on Adapting Existing Games for Education Using Speech Recognition

Apr 27 - May 2, 2013

CHI 2013 in Paris, France. Presented my work on "Adapting Arcade Games for Learning" in the student research competition.

Jan 19, 2013

Won 1st place award in the Palantir Scholarship for Women in Technology. Featured in Palantir news story.

Jan 13 - Jan 14, 2013

Visited Palantir headquarters in Palo Alto, CA as one of 9 finalists in the Palantir Scholarship for Women in Technology. Attended Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner.

Oct 16, 2013

Presented my work on game-based learning at Lincoln Laboratories / Defense Language Institute