Interactions

Authors: Ticianne Darin, Milene Selbach Silveira, Roberto Pereira We've witnessed technology's rapid evolution, but, as Don Norman reminds us, "technology may change rapidly, but people change slowly" [1]. AI, automation, virtual reality, and digital systems are part of everyday lives today. Still, the ensuing problems, such as algorithmic biases and loss of privacy, exhibit a gap between technical innovation and human needs.

Authors: Elizabeth F. Churchill I, along with the San Francisco art community, acutely feel the loss of a great artist and dear friend, Margaret Tedesco, who died last year. Margaret was a deeply thoughtful multidisciplinary artist, an independent curator, and longtime graphic designer at the San Francisco Art Institute. Over more than four decades, Margaret's work bridged physical performance, cinema, and technology.

Authors: Pär J. Ågerfalk The current discourse on generative AI in academic publishing raises critical concerns about scholarly integrity, authorship, and the future of peer review. These concerns deserve serious engagement. Across disciplines and journals, responses range from restrictive and process-focused approaches to those emphasizing transparency and accountability. Many of these strategies, however, risk mislocating the problem they seek to address.

Authors: Chongyuan Zhong Why would a middle school student in Inner Mongolia choose an algorithm over a human counselor when seeking someone to confide in? I found the answer in interviews with some 15-year-olds who felt neglected in their own homes. When a student types into a chatbot that she doesn't know how to talk to anyone, she is seeking something the adults in her life often fail to provide—a safe, predictable boundary. AI doesn't get exhausted; it doesn't judge a "weak" tone of voice.

Authors: Ovetta Sampson When you're designing with AI, do you get a weird feeling that something is missing? You type and an output is created, but it isn't exactly what you envisioned, and you don't feel great about it. You've created this outcome, but you didn't touch or do anything. It appeared almost, it seems, without you. And yet you were there—prompting, typing, guiding a machine—toward an outcome that you're not sure you even wanted and that's not actually good.

Authors: Jay Goradia You open a healthcare portal to refill a prescription. You confirm the request, close the app, and move on. Behind the scenes, an AI assistant may check medication history, verify insurance eligibility, schedule a follow-up, and update records. From your perspective, you made one request. From the system's perspective, several autonomous entities acted on your behalf. Who performed those actions? What authority did they use? And where, exactly, did your control end?

Authors: Kristin Williams, Jason Tarl Jacques, Eri Saikawa Sustainable human-computer interaction (SHCI) faces a paradox: The same technology that enables adaption to environmental change could be exacerbating it. To cope, SHCI needs to work with uncertainty. This may be familiar from conversations on near-term versus long-term benefits of energy savings and carbon reduction strategies [1]. There are many kinds of uncertainty beyond this cost-benefit analysis, though.

Authors: Miriam Sturdee Mona Simion is a professor of philosophy and Michael Cohen Fellow of Exeter College at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of AI. "Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. We are interested in when and on what basis it is rational to believe things. For example, what is evidence?

Authors: Elizabeth F. Churchill, Mikael Wiberg It is with great delight that we welcome you to the September-October issue of Interactions. Collectively, the contributions in this issue challenge the technology world's obsession with frictionless automation, instead arguing for intentionality, human agency, and nuance.

Authors: Asegul Hulus Posted: Thu, July 23, 2026 - 9:56:00 Albert Einstein reportedly warned in 1946 that “technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” His argument was deceptively straightforward: Technology itself is morally indifferent, and the real threat comes from the aims and attitudes of its users. OpenAI recently unveiled GPT-5.6 [1], a model that arrived eight decades after Einstein’s warning.