Social Sensemaking with AI: Designing an Open-ended AI Experience with a Blind Child
Cecily Morrison, Edward Cutrell, Martin Grayson, Anja Thieme, Alex Taylor, Geert Jacob Roumen, Camilla Longden, Sebastian Tschiatschek, Rita Faia Marques, Abigail Sellen
Abstract
AI technologies are often used to aid people in performing discrete tasks with well-defined goals (e.g., recognising faces in images). Emerging technologies that provide continuous, real-time information enable more open-ended AI experiences. In partnership with a blind child, we explore the challenges and opportunities of designing human-AI interaction for a system intended to support social sensemaking. Adopting a research-through-design perspective, we reflect upon working with the uncertain capabilities of AI systems in the design of this experience. We contribute: (i) a concrete example of an open-ended AI system that enabled a blind child to extend his own capabilities; (ii) an illustration of the delta between imagined and actual use, highlighting how capabilities derive from the human-AI interaction and not the AI system alone; and (iii) a discussion of design choices to craft an ongoing human-AI interaction that addresses the challenge of uncertain outputs of AI systems.