Maryland Metacognition Seminar: "Clarifying Awareness, Responsibility, and Intent for People and Machines" by Ben Shneiderman

Location: 2460 A.V. Williams Building (AVW)

Abstract:
The short-term guidance for designers and long-term outlook for philosophers depends on assumptions about differences between people and machines. This talk will offer fresh examples designed to clarify what language is appropriate for describing machine awareness, responsibility for failures, and intent in complex systems that include automated/autonomous components. Underlying questions are how people are different from machines and how a deeper understanding of these differences can lead to more effective designs in the short and long term?

Bio:
Ben Shneiderman is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was elected as a Fellow of the ACM in 1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001. He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Shneiderman pioneered the highlighted textual link in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web. His move into information visualization spawned Spotfire, known for pharmaceutical drug discovery and genomic data analysis. He is also a technical advisor for the treemap visualization producer, The Hive Group. Dr. Shneiderman is the author of Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems (1980) and Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed., 2010, with C. Plaisant). He co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999) with S. Card and J. Mackinlay. His book, Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies (MIT Press), won the IEEE Award for Distinguished Literary Contribution in 2004. His most recent book, Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World (2011), was co-authored with D. Hansen and M. A. Smith.