Steering models (such as the generalized two-point model) predict human steering behavior well when the human is in direct control of a vehicle. In vehicles under autonomous control, human control inputs are not used; rather, an autonomous controller applies steering and acceleration commands to the vehicle. For example, human steering input may be used for state estimation rather than direct control. We show that human steering behavior changes when the human no longer directly controls the vehicle and the two are instead working in a shared autonomy paradigm. Thus, when a vehicle is not under direct human control, steering models like the generalized two-point model do not predict human steering behavior. We also show that the error between predicted human steering behavior and actual human steering behavior reflects a fundamental difference when the human directly controls the vehicle compared to when the vehicle is autonomously controlled. Moreover, we show that a single distribution describes the error between predicted human steering behavior and actual human steering behavior when the human's steering inputs are used for state estimation and the vehicle is autonomously contr
While generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) increasingly transforms academic environments, a critical gap exists in understanding and mitigating human biases in AI interactions, such as anchoring and confirmation bias. This position paper advocates for metacognitive AI literacy interventions to help university students critically engage with AI and address biases across the Human-AI interaction workflows. The paper presents the importance of considering (1) metacognitive support with deliberate friction focusing on human bias; (2) bi-directional Human-AI interaction intervention addressing both input formulation and output interpretation; and (3) adaptive scaffolding that responds to diverse user engagement patterns. These frameworks are illustrated through ongoing work on "DeBiasMe," AIED (AI in Education) interventions designed to enhance awareness of cognitive biases while empowering user agency in AI interactions. The paper invites multiple stakeholders to engage in discussions on design and evaluation methods for scaffolding mechanisms, bias visualization, and analysis frameworks. This position contributes to the emerging field of AI-augmented learning by emphasizing the
Human-in-the-loop learning is gaining popularity, particularly in the field of robotics, because it leverages human knowledge about real-world tasks to facilitate agent learning. When people instruct robots, they naturally adapt their teaching behavior in response to changes in robot performance. While current research predominantly focuses on integrating human teaching dynamics from an algorithmic perspective, understanding these dynamics from a human-centered standpoint is an under-explored, yet fundamental problem. Addressing this issue will enhance both robot learning and user experience. Therefore, this paper explores one potential factor contributing to the dynamic nature of human teaching: robot errors. We conducted a user study to investigate how the presence and severity of robot errors affect three dimensions of human teaching dynamics: feedback granularity, feedback richness, and teaching time, in both forced-choice and open-ended teaching contexts. The results show that people tend to spend more time teaching robots with errors, provide more detailed feedback over specific segments of a robot's trajectory, and that robot error can influence a teacher's choice of feedbac
With the rapid growth in virtual reality technologies, object interaction is becoming increasingly more immersive, elucidating human perception and leading to promising directions towards evaluating human performance under different settings. This spike in technological growth exponentially increased the need for a human performance metric in 3D space. Fitts' law is perhaps the most widely used human prediction model in HCI history attempting to capture human movement in lower dimensions. Despite the collective effort towards deriving an advanced extension of a 3D human performance model based on Fitts' law, a standardized metric is still missing. Moreover, most of the extensions to date assume or limit their findings to certain settings, effectively disregarding important variables that are fundamental to 3D object interaction. In this review, we investigate and analyze the most prominent extensions of Fitts' law and compare their characteristics pinpointing to potentially important aspects for deriving a higher-dimensional performance model. Lastly, we mention the complexities, frontiers as well as potential challenges that may lay ahead.
The rise of automation has provided an opportunity to achieve higher efficiency in manufacturing processes, yet it often compromises the flexibility required to promptly respond to evolving market needs and meet the demand for customization. Human-robot collaboration attempts to tackle these challenges by combining the strength and precision of machines with human ingenuity and perceptual understanding. In this paper, we conceptualize and propose an implementation framework for an autonomous, machine learning-based manipulator that incorporates human-in-the-loop principles and leverages Extended Reality (XR) to facilitate intuitive communication and programming between humans and robots. Furthermore, the conceptual framework foresees human involvement directly in the robot learning process, resulting in higher adaptability and task generalization. The paper highlights key technologies enabling the proposed framework, emphasizing the importance of developing the digital ecosystem as a whole. Additionally, we review the existent implementation approaches of XR in human-robot collaboration, showcasing diverse perspectives and methodologies. The challenges and future outlooks are discu
Within the field of Humanities, there is a recognized need for educational innovation, as there are currently no reported tools available that enable individuals to interact with their environment to create an enhanced learning experience in the humanities (e.g., immersive spaces). This project proposes a solution to address this gap by integrating technology and promoting the development of teaching methodologies in the humanities, specifically by incorporating emotional monitoring during the learning process of humanistic context inside an immersive space. In order to achieve this goal, a real-time emotion detection EEG-based system was developed to interpret and classify specific emotions. These emotions aligned with the early proposal by Descartes (Passions), including admiration, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness. This system aims to integrate emotional data into the Neurohumanities Lab interactive platform, creating a comprehensive and immersive learning environment. This work developed a ML, real-time emotion detection model that provided Valence, Arousal, and Dominance (VAD) estimations every 5 seconds. Using PCA, PSD, RF, and Extra-Trees, the best 8 channels and their r
High-quality human annotations are necessary for creating effective machine learning-driven stream processing systems. We study hybrid stream processing systems based on a Human-In-The-Loop Machine Learning (HITL-ML) paradigm, in which one or many human annotators and an automatic classifier (trained at least partially by the human annotators) label an incoming stream of instances. This is typical of many near-real-time social media analytics and web applications, including annotating social media posts during emergencies by digital volunteer groups. From a practical perspective, low-quality human annotations result in wrong labels for retraining automated classifiers and indirectly contribute to the creation of inaccurate classifiers. Considering human annotation as a psychological process allows us to address these limitations. We show that human annotation quality is dependent on the ordering of instances shown to annotators and can be improved by local changes in the instance sequence/order provided to the annotators, yielding a more accurate annotation of the stream. We adapt a theoretically-motivated human error framework of mistakes and slips for the human annotation task to
This late-breaking work presents a large-scale analysis of explainable AI (XAI) literature to evaluate claims of human explainability. We collaborated with a professional librarian to identify 18,254 papers containing keywords related to explainability and interpretability. Of these, we find that only 253 papers included terms suggesting human involvement in evaluating an XAI technique, and just 128 of those conducted some form of a human study. In other words, fewer than 1% of XAI papers (0.7%) provide empirical evidence of human explainability when compared to the broader body of XAI literature. Our findings underscore a critical gap between claims of human explainability and evidence-based validation, raising concerns about the rigor of XAI research. We call for increased emphasis on human evaluations in XAI studies and provide our literature search methodology to enable both reproducibility and further investigation into this widespread issue.
Human-robot collaboration in surgery represents a significant area of research, driven by the increasing capability of autonomous robotic systems to assist surgeons in complex procedures. This systematic review examines the advancements and persistent challenges in the development of autonomous surgical robotic assistants (ASARs), focusing specifically on scenarios where robots provide meaningful and active support to human surgeons. Adhering to the PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive literature search was conducted across the IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, resulting in the selection of 32 studies for detailed analysis. Two primary collaborative setups were identified: teleoperation-based assistance and direct hands-on interaction. The findings reveal a growing research emphasis on ASARs, with predominant applications currently in endoscope guidance, alongside emerging progress in autonomous tool manipulation. Several key challenges hinder wider adoption, including the alignment of robotic actions with human surgeon preferences, the necessity for procedural awareness within autonomous systems, the establishment of seamless human-robot information exchange, and th
This paper provides a perspective on applying the concepts of information thermodynamics, developed recently in non-equilibrium statistical physics, to problems in theoretical neuroscience. Historically, information and energy in neuroscience have been treated separately, in contrast to physics approaches, where the relationship of entropy production with heat is a central idea. It is argued here that also in neural systems information and energy can be considered within the same theoretical framework. Starting from basic ideas of thermodynamics and information theory on a classic Brownian particle, it is shown how noisy neural networks can infer its probabilistic motion. The decoding of the particle motion by neurons is performed with some accuracy and it has some energy cost, and both can be determined using information thermodynamics. In a similar fashion, we also discuss how neural networks in the brain can learn the particle velocity, and maintain that information in the weights of plastic synapses from a physical point of view. Generally, it is shown how the framework of stochastic and information thermodynamics can be used practically to study neural inference, learning, and
Scientific discoveries often hinge on synthesizing decades of research, a task that potentially outstrips human information processing capacities. Large language models (LLMs) offer a solution. LLMs trained on the vast scientific literature could potentially integrate noisy yet interrelated findings to forecast novel results better than human experts. To evaluate this possibility, we created BrainBench, a forward-looking benchmark for predicting neuroscience results. We find that LLMs surpass experts in predicting experimental outcomes. BrainGPT, an LLM we tuned on the neuroscience literature, performed better yet. Like human experts, when LLMs were confident in their predictions, they were more likely to be correct, which presages a future where humans and LLMs team together to make discoveries. Our approach is not neuroscience-specific and is transferable to other knowledge-intensive endeavors.
Recent advances and reflections on reproducible human neuroscience, especially brain-wide association studies (BWAS) leveraging large datasets, have led to divergent and sometimes opposing views on research practices and priorities. The debates span multiple dimensions. Shifts along these axes have fractured consensus and further fragmented an already heterogeneous field of cognitive neuroscience. Here, we sketch a holistic and integrative response grounded in population neuroscience, organized around a closed-loop "design-analysis-interpretation" research cycle that aims to build consensus while bridging these divides. Our central claim is that population neuroscience offers a unique population-level vantage point for identifying general principles, characterizing inter-individual variabilities, and benchmarking intra-individual changes, thereby providing a supportive framework for small-scale, mechanism-focused studies at the individual level and allowing them to co-evolve with population-level studies. Population neuroscience is not simply about providing larger N for BWAS; its deeper goal is to accumulate a family of cross-scale priors and shared infrastructures that can suppor
As AI technology continues to advance, the importance of human-AI collaboration becomes increasingly evident, with numerous studies exploring its potential in various fields. One vital field is data science, including feature engineering (FE), where both human ingenuity and AI capabilities play pivotal roles. Despite the existence of AI-generated recommendations for FE, there remains a limited understanding of how to effectively integrate and utilize humans' and AI's knowledge. To address this gap, we design a readily-usable prototype, human\&AI-assisted FE in Jupyter notebooks. It harnesses the strengths of humans and AI to provide feature suggestions to users, seamlessly integrating these recommendations into practical workflows. Using the prototype as a research probe, we conducted an exploratory study to gain valuable insights into data science practitioners' perceptions, usage patterns, and their potential needs when presented with feature suggestions from both humans and AI. Through qualitative analysis, we discovered that the Creator of the feature (i.e., AI or human) significantly influences users' feature selection, and the semantic clarity of the suggested feature gre
While the proliferation of foundation models has significantly boosted individual productivity, it also introduces a potential challenge: the homogenization of creative content. In response, we revisit Design-by-Analogy (DbA), a cognitively grounded approach that fosters novel solutions by mapping inspiration across domains. However, prevailing perspectives often restrict DbA to early ideation or specific data modalities, while reducing AI-driven design to simplified input-output pipelines. Such conceptual limitations inadvertently foster widespread design fixation. To address this, we expand the understanding of DbA by embedding it into the entire creative process, thereby demonstrating its capacity to mitigate such fixation. Through a systematic review of 85 studies, we identify six forms of representation and classify techniques across seven stages of the creative process. We further discuss three major application domains: creative industries, intelligent manufacturing, and education and services, demonstrating DbA's practical relevance. Building on this synthesis, we frame DbA as a mediating technology for human-AI collaboration and outline the potential opportunities and inhe
Data-driven algorithmic matching systems promise to help human decision makers make better matching decisions in a wide variety of high-stakes application domains, such as healthcare and social service provision. However, existing systems are not designed to achieve human-AI complementarity: decisions made by a human using an algorithmic matching system are not necessarily better than those made by the human or by the algorithm alone. Our work aims to address this gap. To this end, we propose collaborative matching (comatch), a data-driven algorithmic matching system that takes a collaborative approach: rather than making all the matching decisions for a matching task like existing systems, it selects only the decisions that it is the most confident in, deferring the rest to the human decision maker. In the process, comatch optimizes how many decisions it makes and how many it defers to the human decision maker to provably maximize performance. We conduct a large-scale human subject study with $800$ participants to validate the proposed approach. The results demonstrate that the matching outcomes produced by comatch outperform those generated by either human participants or by algo
Anticipating the motion of all humans in dynamic environments such as homes and offices is critical to enable safe and effective robot navigation. Such spaces remain challenging as humans do not follow strict rules of motion and there are often multiple occluded entry points such as corners and doors that create opportunities for sudden encounters. In this work, we present a Transformer based architecture to predict human future trajectories in human-centric environments from input features including human positions, head orientations, and 3D skeletal keypoints from onboard in-the-wild sensory information. The resulting model captures the inherent uncertainty for future human trajectory prediction and achieves state-of-the-art performance on common prediction benchmarks and a human tracking dataset captured from a mobile robot adapted for the prediction task. Furthermore, we identify new agents with limited historical data as a major contributor to error and demonstrate the complementary nature of 3D skeletal poses in reducing prediction error in such challenging scenarios.
A widely accepted explanation for robots planning overcautious or overaggressive trajectories alongside human is that the crowd density exceeds a threshold such that all feasible trajectories are considered unsafe -- the freezing robot problem. However, even with low crowd density, the robot's navigation performance could still drop drastically when in close proximity to human. In this work, we argue that a broader cause of suboptimal navigation performance near human is due to the robot's misjudgement for the human's willingness (flexibility) to share space with others, particularly when the robot assumes the human's flexibility holds constant during interaction, a phenomenon of what we call human robot pacing mismatch. We show that the necessary condition for solving pacing mismatch is to model the evolution of both the robot and the human's flexibility during decision making, a strategy called distribution space modeling. We demonstrate the advantage of distribution space coupling through an anecdotal case study and discuss the future directions of solving human robot pacing mismatch.
Integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into business process management tools promises to democratize Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modeling for non-experts. While automated frameworks assess syntactic and semantic quality, they miss human factors like trust, usability, and professional alignment. We conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of our proposed solution, an LLM-powered BPMN copilot, with five process modeling experts using focus groups and standardized questionnaires. Our findings reveal a critical tension between acceptable perceived usability (mean CUQ score: 67.2/100) and notably lower trust (mean score: 48.8\%), with reliability rated as the most critical concern (M=1.8/5). Furthermore, we identified output-quality issues, prompting difficulties, and a need for the LLM to ask more in-depth clarifying questions about the process. We envision five use cases ranging from domain-expert support to enterprise quality assurance. We demonstrate the necessity of human-centered evaluation complementing automated benchmarking for LLM modeling agents.
Current discourse on Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics, dominated by "trustworthy" and "responsible" AI, overlooks a more fundamental human-computer interaction (HCI) crisis: the erosion of human agency. This paper argues that the primary challenge of high-stakes AI systems is not trust, but the preservation of human causal control. We posit that "bad AI" will function as "bad UI," a metaphor for catastrophic interface failures that misrepresent system state and lead to human error. Applying Marshall McLuhan's media theory, AI can be framed as a technology of "augmentation" that simultaneously "amputates" the user's direct perception of causality. This places the interface as the critical locus where a "double uncertainty"--that of the human user and that of the probabilistic model--must be mediated. We critique current Explainable AI (XAI) for its correlational focus and failure to represent uncertainty. We conclude by proposing a rigorous, nested Causal-Agency Framework (CAF) that integrates causal models, uncertainty quantification, and human-centered evaluation to restore agency at the interface.
Over the last years, the rising capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) have improved human decision-making in many application areas. Teaming between AI and humans may even lead to complementary team performance (CTP), i.e., a level of performance beyond the ones that can be reached by AI or humans individually. Many researchers have proposed using explainable AI (XAI) to enable humans to rely on AI advice appropriately and thereby reach CTP. However, CTP is rarely demonstrated in previous work as often the focus is on the design of explainability, while a fundamental prerequisite -- the presence of complementarity potential between humans and AI -- is often neglected. Therefore, we focus on the existence of this potential for effective human-AI decision-making. Specifically, we identify information asymmetry as an essential source of complementarity potential, as in many real-world situations, humans have access to different contextual information. By conducting an online experiment, we demonstrate that humans can use such contextual information to adjust the AI's decision, finally resulting in CTP.