Organizational Unit:

School of Literature, Media, and Communication

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70714

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Organizational Unit

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

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Organizational Unit

Sci Fi Lab

Organizational Unit

Writing and Communication Program

ArchiveSpace Name Record

https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/258

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 376

Computational Sensemaking for Embodied Co-Creative Artificial Intelligence

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-12-02) Deshpande, Manoj

This research lies at the intersection of human-AI interaction, creative collaboration, embodied cognition, and social cognition. Its central aim is to advance the understanding of how AI agents can actively participate in creative processes traditionally dominated by human-human interactions, such as dance and drawing. Grounded in theories of embodiment and intersubjectivity—which prioritize sensory engagement and interaction over abstract cognition—this work explores the complexities of co-creativity and social cognition through the lens of sensemaking within AI systems. The research investigates how AI systems can engage in co-creative processes by leveraging sensemaking patterns, both descriptively and generatively. It explores how theories of embodiment and sensemaking enhance our understanding of co-creativity, how sensemaking patterns can be analyzed and integrated into co-creative systems, and how design considerations for future co-creative AI systems can be developed. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses through empirical studies, interviews, video coding, thematic analysis, surveys, speculative design, and self-reflective exercises. Key contributions include a new perspective on computational co-creativity that integrates theories from human-computer interaction, embodiment, and social cognition. The dissertation introduces the Observable Creative Sensemaking (OCSM) framework, a method for quantifying sensemaking in embodied creative improvisation. It demonstrates how OCSM can be used descriptively to compare different co-creative interactions and applied as a generative model to guide real-time improvisation. Additionally, the development of two co-creative AI systems—Drawcto, a multi-agent drawing application, and LuminAI, an embodied improvisational dance system—highlights the practical application of these theoretical frameworks and models in real-world AI systems.
Reframing Climate Data: Situating Data in Histories in Place

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-10-03) Biggs, Heidi

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues we face today as a society. The phenomenon has inspired new awareness of human entanglements with non-human others (like plants, animals, and ecologies) as well as disparate impacts that fall along familiar lines (laid via histories) of race, gender, class, and access. In this talk, I discuss my research agenda, which uses design and making alongside humanistic theory and sensitivities to lay out critical agendas for Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI) and Interaction Design Research. Over the course of two design research projects, I discuss the entanglements of climate change, data, and embodied histories in place. By framing climate change impacts as tied to data practices, unevenly distributed, and historically situated, it shifts narratives to more local, actionable, and justice-oriented interventions. This work ultimately seeks to expand notions of criticality in sustainable HCI research.
Good Enough Explanations: How Can Local Publics Understand and Explain Civic Predictive Systems?

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-07-24) Gupta, Shubhangi

How can the Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) community support public understanding of the spatial workings and effects of civic predictive systems? Civic processes in the urban smart city are increasingly being governed by automated predictive systems using machine learning models. Despite their widespread use in everyday domains such as education, policing, social services, and economic investments, they continue to remain invisible and inaccessible to local publics, who bear the burden of their effects. XAI and Artificial Intelligence (AI) transparency researchers are increasingly calling for the development of public-centered AI explanations. However, in the context of civic AI, existing techniques fall short in (1) how they understand the consumers and creators of explanations, (2) how they explain the socio-technical assemblages that give rise to AI systems, (3) how they design interactions to create and deliver explanations, and (4) how they conceptualize explanation goals in relation to public action. This dissertation engages in qualitative, participatory, and design-based research to introduce the concept of ‘good enough explanations’ in response to these challenges. Good enough explanations may not be complete or universal. Instead, as this dissertation formulates, such explanations consist of ongoing processes that allow diverse publics to partially engage with features of predictive systems and assess such systems in relation to their communities. This dissertation (1) theorizes qualities underlying good enough explanations, (2) engages in the development of such explanations with diverse publics, and (3) suggests theories and strategies to guide the development of systems for good enough explaining. Ultimately, this dissertation hopes to serve as a guide for XAI researchers, civic organizations, as well as policymakers, as they work together to engage with publics for the democratic oversight, assessment, and regulation of civic AI systems.
ChatGPT and the Distinguishability of Human-Written Speech

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-04-29) Palmer, Sadie Elise

Powerful large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have caused a disturbance in the writing world, bringing about issues both in the classroom and in everyday life by blurring the line between human and machine. Due to the lack of disclosure around the use of text-generating AI in written texts, humans have been left to distinguish whether texts they encounter have been written by their fellow humans or are the work of an LLM that has trained on large amounts of human data. In this thesis, I explore this new task of humans and the ethical questions that follow. Can humans reliably distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text? If so, is there an innate “human” quality about texts that an AI cannot replicate? And how do feelings towards AI indicate its future uses in our society, particularly when it comes to the ever-increasing collaboration between AI and humans? I addressed these questions using a mixed-methods approach where 16 participants engaged in an authorship activity preceded and followed by interview questions where they described how they went about determining the authorship of the 10 presented texts.
Foley Scholar Winner and Finalists Presentations Spring 2024

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-03-07) Bhat, Karthik Seetharama ; Narechania, Arpit ; Pendse, Sachin ; Riggs, Alexandra Teixeira

Foley Scholar Award Winner: Envisioning Technology-Mediated Futures of Care Work, Karthik Seetharama Bhat. Caregiving is a universal activity that is receiving increasing attention among technologists and researchers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging technologies like conversational AI, augmented and virtual reality, and smart homes have all been described as potentially revolutionary technologies in care work, intended to automate and transform the overall care experience for caregivers and care recipients. However, such promises have yet to translate to successful deployments as these technological innovations come up against socioculturally situated traditions of care work that prioritize human connection and interaction. In this talk, I will share empirical studies looking into how formal care workers (in clinical settings) and informal care workers (in home settings) reconcile technology utilization in care work with sociocultural expectations and norms that dissuade them. I will then discuss possible technology-mediated futures of care work by positing how emerging technologies could best be designed for and integrated into activities of care in ways that unburden care workers while ensuring quality care.
AI, Art, and Afrofuturism: STEAM learning with Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-02-08) Gaskins, Nettrice R.
Advancing Design-Based and Learner-Centered Research Approaches to Co-Create Equitable and Empowering Learning Experiences with Black Women Computing Students at HBCUs

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-11) Blunt, Takeria

The landscape of computing education in the U.S. is rapidly evolving, and a growing body of researchers, educators and others call into question the goals, scope, and implementation of computing education. This is a complex issue as researchers grapple with a range of challenges and topics, such as addressing equity, ethics, and neutrality in computer science (CS) pedagogy, expanding notions of computational literacy, and designing viable learning environments. This work takes an interdisciplinary conceptual and methodological approach to explore several of these pressing concerns in computing education, with Black women CS students at Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCUs) as a study group. Findings produce several contributions to higher education research on the social realities of Black women HBCU computing students, practical considerations for advancing the design-based research methodology of social design-based experimentation (SDBEs), and implications for learner-centered design practices for CS education research.
Using visualization to illustrate the values underpinning large-scale communities

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-08-01) Hughes, Galen

Over the last three decades, the dynamic nature of internet cultures has been continually reshaping the landscape of discourse analysis. This transformation necessitates constant methodological innovation, a challenge this thesis aims to address by focusing on the role of data visualization in discourse analysis. Particularly, it investigates the cross- cultural discourse occurring in large-scale online events. I argue that data visualizations offer a potent lens for uncovering and reinforcing implicit values within online communities. They provide tangible evidence of these values, weaving together narratives from seemingly scattered data. Over the course of this study, I have delved into an impressive corpus of over 249,232 chat messages, dedicating 3 hours 17 minutes and 4 seconds to the content exploration. However, despite the power of data visualization, it's important to acknowledge its limitations. A comprehensive understanding of the community being studied is indispensable, without which the full potential of data visualization cannot be realized. In this longitudinal study, I analyze three significant live streams—1) [DEBUT STREAM] SHAAAAAARK, Sep 12th, 2020; 2) Reacting to my Debut Stream., March 13th, 2021; 3)【3D BIRTHDAY】PARTY TIME!, June 20th, 2022—hosted by the popular Virtual YouTuber (VTuber), Gawr Gura. Collectively, these events highlight an underlying aesthetic of cuteness, a value binding Gura’s community of chumbuds together. These parasocial relationships are defined by bidirectional interaction, emotional reactions, and a shared suspension of disbelief, mediated through an avatar. This constructed character facilitates a unique dynamic, where the aesthetic of cuteness becomes a cultural value. While other values exist within the community, this thesis primarily concentrates on the argument for cuteness, made evident through data visualization. These values are embodied and reinforced in the discourse patterns played out between Gawr Gura and her audience. Community actors such as clippers reinforce these patterns and values. They do so by capturing memorable stream moments, upholding community guidelines, and modeling appropriate behavior to newcomers. In conclusion, this thesis identifies and explores a model of large-scale online discourse driven by live-stream events. It highlights the significance of data visualization in analyzing this model, the patterns structuring it, and the values underpinning it. This approach offers a new dimension to the study of discourse in large-scale online communities, reflecting the continuous evolution of methods in response to the ever-changing landscape of internet cultures.
Critical Fabulation and Stories for Design: Black Feminist Technoscience and the Design Practice of African American Craftswomen

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-25) Sherman, Jihan Stanford

The stories we tell about design have set the priorities and practices that we use to create technology and set limits on how they might open other possible futures for the ways we make with the world. This dissertation argues that the dominant story of design has been told as a single story that has overlooked many heritages and practices of it. It looks to stories that are absent in order to destabilize the single story and imagine how we might practice design differently. Building on my personal experiences as a Black woman who is an architect, designer, and craftswoman, this research focuses on African American craftswomen as a group of designers who have been absent from the single story. Shifting our focus to Black women heightens both our understanding of the transgressive systems embedded in design and opportunities to transform it. This dissertation project moves beyond awareness to developing alternatives for design practice itself. I introduce and develop Black feminist technoscience (BFTS) as a framework for design with six key principles: intersectionality, coming to voice, the personal and situated, (Black) temporalities, (em)bodied ecologies and the ethics of care. As a praxis, the underlying methodological structure of BFTS and this dissertation project is storytelling. I extend critical fabulation, initially developed by Saidiya Hartman and explored for design by Daniela Rosner, as a method of storytelling that engages qualitative analysis, critical theory, and experiments that seek to imagine design and technology differently. I present ethnographic research that explores the histories and practices of six African American craftswomen: Anginique Walker, Adriane Johnson, Jocelyn Dorsey, Frances Bosley, Minnie R. Choice, and Cheryl Cherry-Hill. From this study, this dissertation presents two stories crafted for design centered on African American craftswomen as critical fabulation: “And she taught me how to knit” and “There’s a whole energy that goes into crafting.” These critical fabulation stories are questionings and imaginings of different engagements for design.
Radical Remembering: Black Feminist Technopractice for Interactive Narratives

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-10) Pettijohn, Brandy J.

The affordances of digital media can provide a meaningful intervention to bring various histories to people in public and private spaces. Grounded in the theories and ethics of Black feminist thought, my dissertation considers interactive narratives of Black culture and histories using the parameters of race and technology, and visual culture to remediate gentrification in the American South, or what has been characterized as southern forgetting. I am interested in the affordances that digital technologies bring to location identity (Kwon, 2004) and in defining a praxis called “Black feminist technopractice” that reduces harm and trauma at digital cultural sites. Black feminist technopractice is an interdisciplinary digital humanities framework for interactive narratives that deploys what we know as participatory design and speculative design, combined with art and archival practices while leveraging Black technoculture, which examines how Black people make meaning in digital spaces. Black feminist technopractice is rooted in the ideology of Black feminist thought (BFT), which honors the standpoints of the lived experience of marginalized people, particularly Black people, as an intellectual starting point. What is at stake is that when designing historical and cultural sites, the research and work of the humanities need to be engaged as robustly as the technological mediums. The affordances of technologies allow radical remembering to act as an activation to witness the recuperation of histories that have been obscured through time instead of acting like technologies can solve gaps in research and issues in storytelling.