Event
Talk on Active Inference and Human-Computer Interaction
Location
Date
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Title
Active Inference and Human-Computer Interaction
Abstract
Active Inference is a closed-loop computational theoretical basis for understanding behaviour, based on agents with internal probabilistic generative models that encode their beliefs about how hidden states in their environment cause their sensations. We review Active Inference and how it could be applied to model the human-computer interaction loop. Active Inference provides a coherent framework for managing generative models of humans, their environments, sensors and interface components. It informs off-line design and supports real-time, online adaptation. It provides model-based explanations for behaviours observed in HCI, and new tools to measure important concepts such as agency and engagement. We discuss how Active Inference offers a new basis for a theory of interaction in HCI, tools for design of modern, complex sensor-based systems, and integration of artificial intelligence technologies, enabling it to cope with diversity in human users and contexts. We discuss the practical challenges in implementing such Active Inference-based systems.
Bio
Roderick Murray-Smith is a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, leading the Inference, Dynamics and Interaction research group. He works in the overlap between machine learning, interaction design and control theory. His main current activity is the 5 year ERC Advanced grant project, Designing Interaction Freedom via Active Inference (DIFAI). The project’s objectives are to integrate Active Inference theory into the human-computer interaction loop, linking human behaviour via sensors and ML/inference embeddings with dynamic mediating mechanisms to create end-to-end mutually adaptive loops between humans and systems. We will use machine learning to give users freedom to express themselves individually, we can be robust to user heterogeneity, ensure fairness for diverse users and enable creative uses of novel technologies.
In recent years, his research has included Machine Learning in Science, multimodal sensor-based interaction with mobile devices, mobile spatial interaction, AR/VR, Brain-Computer interaction and nonparametric machine learning. Prior to this he held positions at the Hamilton Institute, NUIM, Technical University of Denmark, M.I.T. (Mike Jordan’s lab), and Daimler-Benz Research, Berlin, and was the Director of SICSA, the Scottish Informatics and Computing Science Alliance. He works closely with the mobile phone industry, having worked together with Google, Nokia, Samsung, Moodagent, FT/Orange, Microsoft and Bang & Olufsen, bringing concepts to products with many of them. He was a member of Nokia’s Scientific Advisory Board and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Computational Inference Research. He has co-authored three edited volumes, 52 journal papers, 21 book chapters, and over 100 conference papers.
About the event
After the talk, there will be an opportunity to meet with Roderick for informal discussions.