We're proposing a 3-hour in-person CRAFT session at the ACM FAccT 2027 conference in Porto, Portugal.
Background and Rationale
In its brief history, the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) community has informed critical and applied development of AI systems. Bringing together diverse methodologies, perspectives, and experiences, the community has furnished new approaches, techniques, and models for sociotechnical design and governance of emerging technologies as a combination of opportunities, resources, and decisions. Collective agenda-setting within FAccT has fostered close exchange across AI and HCI on issues such as epistemic safety, social justice, environmental sustainability, accessibility and inclusivity, and the practical impact of GenAI and HCI. Consequently, with the bridging of the AAAI and the SIGCHI communities, the inimical relation between HCI and AI has improved partly due to the emergent requirements for interactive and pervasive computing systems for emerging markets. As Jonathan Grudin argues, “the last hurdle (between HCI and AI) may be finding a place to meet” (Grudin, 2009, p. 55), and our session goal is set to provide a provisional tent or a shed for dialoguing actionable pathways for designing and adopting usable and adaptable technologies for the everyday.
Session Focus
This CRAFT session will explore evolving questions about scaffolding from the “human in the loop” to a spectrum of “model in the loop,” to reunite and reconnect HCI and AI. As an experimental session of CRAFTing a provisional bridge between HCI and AI, we propose to blend pair& share speed networking, open dialogue, stand-up style pitch, and interactive talking cycle activities:
Building on the spirit of FAccT as a collective, the speed networking “pair & share” will entail an infrastructuring of spaces, channels, and participation modalities that are adaptive, pluriversal, and participatory.
The dialogue will focus primarily on reflecting on/and remembering the histories of HCI and AI as research communities have been "divided by a common focus" partly due to the contention for intellectual and economic resources (Grudin, 2009). During AI winters, HCI thrived; and during HCI turns, AI matured; thus, the provocation: how do we rethink and rebuild the HCI-AI ambivalence?
Evidently, the fields of AI and HCI are in crisis, having to navigate the complexities of interdisciplinarity and reproducibility, and specifically the how, what, and when to use AI in HCI research and practice and vice versa. We solicit ideas, options, actions, and even rants on how to optimally bridge HCI and AI towards the common aspiration of improving human sociability and wellbeing. We'll encourage participants to share; it's an open mic.
From the session, we hope to further cultivate a sense of infrastructuring of fringed HCI and AI researchers and practitioners into the FAccT collective as communities sustained by the evolving practices of diverse disciplines. Come join us in Porto, Portugal, between June 21- 24, 2027.
Organising Committee:
Muhammad ADAMU
School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Makuochi NKWO
School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, UK
Jay CUNNINGHAM
Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media, DePaul University, Chicago, USA
Shaimaa LAZEM
City of Scientific Research and Technology Applications (SRTA-City), Alexandria, Egypt.