University of Waikato – New Zealand
Traditionally, humans have been seen as users of technology, leading to considerations of how people interact with computers and how computers present information back to them. The evolution of internet-connected devices, wearable technology, big data and AI have given rise to smart systems and smart environments, where human actions and everyday behaviour become implicit inputs to technology, and environmental changes become the outputs. This talk outlines some of the implications of this and describes how human-centred computing enables us to keep the user at the forefront of technological innovation.
IBM Research Brazil
As artificial intelligence progresses toward autonomous agents, crucial lessons from conversational AI can be applied to ensure these new systems are safe and trustworthy. This talk synthesizes insights on human-AI interaction, highlighting the need for agents to integrate value-aware controls, reveal uncertainty, and support fairness. This approach is essential for building a future where proactive AI systems engage in meaningful and secure interactions.
University of Glasgow – UK
I will present our work into improving passenger journeys using immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality (together XR) to support entertainment, work and collaboration on the move. In Europe, people travel an average of 12,000km per year on private and public transport, in cars, buses, planes and trains. These journeys are often repetitive and wasted time. This total will rise with the arrival of fully autonomous cars, which free drivers to become passengers. The potential to recover this lost time is impeded by 3 significant challenges:
XR headsets could allow passengers to use their travel time in new, productive ways, but only if these fundamental challenges can be overcome. Passengers would be able to use large virtual displays for productivity; escape the physical confines of the vehicle and become immersed in virtual experiences; and communicate with distant others through new embodied forms of communication. I will discuss our solutions to these challenges, and how we can radically transform the passenger experience.
Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell’Informazione “Alessandro Faedo” – ISTI, Italy
The rapid proliferation of sensors, connected objects, and generative AI is transforming everyday environments into complex, interconnected digital ecosystems, reshaping how we interact with them. While these developments offer promising opportunities to enhance comfort, efficiency, and assistance through smart objects, services, and robots, they also risk creating opaque, centralised, and inaccessible systems that users struggle to understand or control. This talk explores strategies to democratise intelligent ecosystems of people, objects, and robots by making them more transparent, customisable, and inclusive. I will discuss design concepts and interactive tools that aim to support end-user development, interpretable automations, conversational agents, and participatory approaches, in order to empower individuals to adapt the behaviour of connected objects and robotic assistants to their own goals. Through examples and case studies from several projects, the talk will discuss possible approaches that can promote human control and social good across diverse settings, including smart homes and cognitive training for older adults. Overall, the talk aims to stimulate discussion on the key challenges in opening up control over these ecosystems to broader communities and outline a vision for more equitable and human-centred digital futures.
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
The literature is rich in efforts to model and analyze how user behaviors drive the dissemination of online content. Yet, human behavior is inherently heterogeneous, multi-faceted, and dynamic, with components that are often subjective and conceptually hard to operationalize from digital traces. In this talk, I will present our research on how both individual and collective behaviors may drive information spread in social media. In particular, we examine curiosity as an individual trait that fuels engagement, and coordination as a collective mechanism that can amplify campaigns, including the diffusion of misinformation and hate speech. Complementing this behavioral perspective, I will also discuss some risks posed by online platforms, notably with respect to children, offering evidence of exposure to age-inappropriate, harmful, or toxic content. By bringing together these drivers and dangers of information dissemination, the talk highlights both the mechanisms that accelerate online spread and the critical challenges they pose for user well-being, both online and offline.
Quaest Pesquisa – CEO
To be announced
