This event is organized by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Note: Event details may change. Please refer to the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s events page for the most current information.
Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes Anastasia Kuzminykh, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute. With a background spanning computer science, psychology, and ethnographic research, Kuzminykh’s work bridges human-computer interaction and the design of intelligent systems.
Her current research focuses on how people interact with AI systems through conversation—exploring trust, reliability, and user perception in human–agent communication. Through The COoKIE Group, Kuzminykh studies how design decisions shape ethical and effective human–AI collaboration, especially in contexts involving large language models, generative tools, and decision-support systems.
Moderator: Avery Slater, Department of English & Drama
Location: Online
Talk title
“The power of discussion: Designing useful communication with AI agents”
Abstract:
The rapid development of LLM-based interfaces has made interactions with AI systems easily accessible, dynamically adaptable, and most importantly, comprehensible for a wide audience, leading to the unprecedented current popularity of human-AI collaboration. Shifting to this human-agent communication paradigm, empowered by the intuitive nature of conversational interfaces, quickly opened exciting opportunities for users and has already significantly reshaped their information-seeking practices, decision-making processes, creative activities, etc. However, alongside all the promising advances, we started observing numerous worrisome threats to the quality of such human-AI collaboration, including, for example, users’ overreliance on AI, the “gulf of envisioning” challenge with formulating effective prompts, the models’ tendency for sycophantic behaviours, or the issues of potential amplification of biases and intensification of echo chambers. In this talk, I will cover some of the recent work done with my research group toward addressing these challenges and discuss the role of conversation architecture in supporting efficient human-AI collaboration.
Suggested reading:
Paula Akemi Aoyagui, Kelsey Stemmler, Sharon A. Ferguson, Young-Ho Kim, and Anastasia Kuzminykh, “A matter of perspective (s): Contrasting human and llm argumentation in subjective decision-making on subtle sexism.” In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–16. 2025.
Sharon Ferguson, Paula Akemi Aoyagui, Rimsha Rizvi, Young-Ho Kim, and Anastasia Kuzminykh, “The explanation that hits home: The characteristics of verbal explanations that affect human perception in subjective decision-making.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 8, no. CSCW2 (2024): 1–37.
Brennan Jones, Kelsey Stemmler, Emily Su, Young-Ho Kim, and Anastasia Kuzminykh, “Users’ expectations and practices with agent memory.” In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–8. 2025.
About Anastasia Kuzminykh
Anastasia Kuzminykh is an assistant professor in human-computer interaction at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. She holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Waterloo and a degree in neuro- and pathopsychology from the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Her background incorporates experiences in human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology and affective science, ethnographic research, and systems design. She has worked both with industry, including Google (US), Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK), Aterlo Networks (Canada), and with research institutions worldwide, including Inria Lille (France) and Ben Gurion University (Israel), and continues to actively collaborate with groups and companies around the world.
In her work in human-computer interaction and information dynamics, Kuzminykh analyzes complex communication environments and designs corresponding systems to advance user performance. Her current research interests are focused on human interaction with AI systems, particularly human-agent communication supported through conversational user interfaces. She is interested in how users perceive AI systems and how these perceptions affect information exchange processes, how people organize information through conversational interfaces (information architecture), and how we can design ethical and efficient human-AI collaboration. At U of T, Kuzminykh runs The COoKIE Group, an interdisciplinary research lab whose work touches on diverse technologies including conversational agents, large language models, generative AI systems, and AI-based decision support systems. Seeking to advance human-AI interaction design, Kuzminykh and her collaborators explore mechanisms driving the perceptions of different types of AI systems, such as trust, anthropomorphization, and perceived reliability to inform the system and algorithm design requirements for effective, efficient, and ethical AI.
About the SRI Seminar Series
The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.
Each week, a featured speaker will present for 45 minutes, followed by an open discussion. Registered attendees will be emailed a Zoom link before the event begins. The event will be recorded and posted online.