Re-inventing the Attention Machine
Today, algorithmic systems such as social media feeds and generative AI systems increasingly mediate human interactions and experiences. But interactions with these black-boxes reflect the worst of us due to impoverished objectives that amplify problematic content, induce algorithmic overreliance and monoculture. Existing attention-maximizing objectives optimize for engagement signals that are (at best) an indirect proxy of users’ preferences and underlying values. In this talk, I will discuss work on scaling the measurement of social AI systems to highlight the gaps in existing algorithmic objectives and propose new objectives for evaluating and steering social algorithms. First, I will show an approach for fighting the algorithmic amplification of misinformation on social media through a decentralized accuracy prompt that increases user discernment and in turn steers the algorithmic objective. Next, I will discuss how to support a wider set of human values in social media algorithms by introducing a personalized method for measuring human values in social media posts. I will then use this tool to show that X’s in-production feed algorithm is misaligned with its user’s values. I will close with implications for human creativity and content production. Together, this work underscores the promise of new forms of interactions with algorithmic systems that center human agency for prosocial outcomes.

About our speaker
Ziv Epstein is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT. In his research, he focuses on translating insights from design and the social sciences into the development of sociotechnical systems such as generative AI and social media platforms. Ziv has published papers in venues such as the general interest journals Nature, Science and PNAS, as well as top-tier computer science proceedings such as CHI and CSCW. His work has also received widespread media attention in outlets like the New York Times, Scientific American, and NPR..

How to Get There
Public transportation: Take the Orange Line to Ruggles or the Green Line to Northeastern University. Upon arrival to Khoury College, West Village H, take the elevator to the third floor, then turn left and proceed to Room 366.

Vibing with your AI
This talk examines how people understand and relate to conversational AI, tracing a shift from metaphor-based mental models to deliberately designed AI personalities. Drawing on years of research published across ACM CHI, CSCW, TOCHI, and CUI, it shows how users’ perceptions of voice and conversational interfaces have evolved from tools or simplistic agents to social actors with distinct “vibes.” I demonstrate how early metaphors, such as AI as a child, butler, or friend, laid the conceptual groundwork for today’s personality-driven design enabled by large language models, where traits such as agreeableness or openness can be systematically tuned. The talk concludes by surfacing both the design opportunities and ethical risks of this shift, including trust calibration, emotional manipulation, and transparency, and argues for more responsible, human-centered approaches to AI personality design.

About our speaker
Smit Desai is an Assistant Professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) at Northeastern University, with joint appointments in Art + Design and Communication Studies and an affiliated appointment in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He directs the Conversational Human–AI Interactions (CHAI) Lab, which investigates how people understand, trust, and collaborate with conversational AI—and how these systems can be designed to augment human capabilities and support meaningful interactions.

Smit’s research bridges theory and design practice: he examines users’ mental models through methods such as metaphor analysis and persona design, and applies these insights to build next-generation conversational agents. His current projects span healthcare (AI assistants for serious illness conversations in emergency departments), aging and well-being (voice-first reminiscence systems like Memory Box), and everyday collaboration (LLM-powered chatbots that adapt to user personality). Across these efforts, his work emphasizes human-centered AI principles, transparency, and the social consequences of giving machines personalities and roles.

His work has appeared in premier HCI venues including CHI, CSCW, and TOCHI. He serves on the organizing committee for the ACM SIGCHI Conversational User Interfaces Conference (2024-2026), ACM CHI (2026), and leads workshops on ethical conversational persona design at major HCI conferences. Smit received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Naviagation: Enter the building through this gate and take left.

Nearest T station is Ruggles on Orange line and Northeastern University on Green line

Bringing Digital Empathy to Conversational AI Agents
Empathy is central to everyday interactions and enables stronger collaboration, leadership, and communication. Extending this human capacity to conversational AI can raise engagement and satisfaction, but it also brings risks such as dependency and overreliance. This talk shares recent efforts at Microsoft Research to map the many forms of digital empathy and highlights the opportunities and challenges of building it into conversational agents.

About our speaker
Javier Hernandez is a Principal Researcher in the Interactive Multimodal Futures group at Microsoft Research and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing journal. Javier’s research focuses on how future AI agents can collaborate effectively by understanding users more deeply and adapting to their context. Before Microsoft, he was a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, where he earned his Ph.D. in the Affective Computing group. His work, spanning mental health support, emotion-aware technology, and user-centered AI, has received multiple best paper awards and has been featured in National Geographic and The Economists.

Naviagation: Enter the building through this gate and take left.

Nearest T station is Ruggles on Orange line and Northeastern University on Green line