Guest post by Kath Jones, Northumbria University
The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems took place in Yokohama, Japan, at the PACIFICO Yokohama from 26 April to 1 May 2025. The conference embraced the theme of Ikigai, a Japanese concept referring to what gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.
RAi UK’s postdoctoral researcher community had a fantastic presence at the conference, connecting across the RAi UK community and beyond to make new international connections, enjoy new conversations and extend the impact of their research. Published contributions acknowledging RAi UK funding can be viewed on the ACM Digital Library.
Kath Jones, a member of the PROBabLE Futures Keystone team, reflects on her experience of CHI and shares some highlights and photos below. Thank you Kath!
My CHI 2025
Access in Context Workshop – I attended with Anna R L Carter, one of the organisers, who is also from Northumbria University on Saturday, 26th April. The workshop encouraged group and individual storytelling and reflection on how technology could support access through the use of crafting objects. There was much discussion around accessibility and neurodiversity.
Participatory AI Design Workshop – Kyle Montague (Northumbria University and part of the Skills project ‘Misinformation/Disinformation and Generative AI: Building Young Refugees’ Skills and Capacities’ as well as the PROBabLE Futures Keystone) and I presented our slides on the PROBabLE Futures project and contributed to discussions within the workshop. I established connections with three individuals, one based in Australia, one in Canada and one in America, who are interested in the PROBabLE Futures work and would like further discussions around emerging methodologies that could be used to identify responsible AI use in Law Enforcement. Key literature from other countries was also identified that focuses on similar issues being faced, which will aid in informing our research here in the UK.
RAi Meetup Dinner – A number of us (Eike Scheiders, Joel Fischer, Gisela Reyez Cruz, Yashar Moshfeghi, and Alfie Cameron) met on Monday, 28th April, to have dinner. We discussed funding, submissions to the UKRI conference in September, publishing and presenting at CHI and awards, amongst other topics. We sampled Japanese food. I very much enjoyed connecting with everyone and hope to have more opportunities in the future. A key paper that I am sharing with the Probable Futures team is ‘Objection Overruled! Lay People can Distinguish Large Language Models from Lawyers, but still Favour Advice from an LLM‘.
Presenting my PhD paper on Thursday, 1st May. The presentation went well. I broke the mould a little and made it interactive so that I could reach the audience in the short time allocated to us. The talk has quite a few Psychology terms in it! Again, I attach some photos of the session for you. I intend to submit this paper to the September conference.
Finally, although I was not directly involved, the Karaokai created by my team (NorSc) won the Popular Choice Award. It was so successful that they received twice as many votes as the second-place holders did in comparison to the second and third-place holders. A proud moment to be part of such a creative, innovative and engaging team! The accompanying paper is ‘KaraokAI: Exploring the Potential of AI-Generated Karaoke for Academic Conferences and Research Experiences‘.