Hwajung Hong
Associate Professor
Department of Industrial Design at KAIST
Thursday, Apr 11, 2024
12:00 p.m. Lunch; 12:30 p.m. Talk
Location:
TSRB 1st Floor Ballroom
85 Fifth St NW
Atlanta, GA 30308
If you can't attend, please watch the Live Stream.
Abstract: As AI advances, so does human intelligence and productivity. Yet, AI use has the potential to
reduce users' capacity for deliberate decision-making, thereby diminishing their sense of agency. In
this talk, I will discuss how AI's core features—prediction, conversation, and generation—can be
employed in the field of mental health, a domain where agency is crucial, to support self-reflection and
informed decision-making about health activities. My research team conducted a series of studies on
examining the design and impact of AI-driven systems that: 1) utilize stress prediction and
explainability to empower users in managing stress; 2) employ conversational AI to assist users in
reevaluating cognitive biases; and 3) leverage language generation models for fostering self-reflection
via cooperative diary writing. The goal of this talk is to provide insights and recommendations for
designers, researchers, and practitioners to design AI technologies that are more sensitive to human
concerns and behavior to augment human agency within mental health interventions.
Bio: Hwajung Hong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, and leads the
DxD (Data, Interaction, Design) Lab. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the KAIST AI Institute.
Hong's research in human-AI interaction focuses on developing systems for better human-data interaction
in diverse settings such as healthcare and education. Her work aims to enhance the ways people interact
with and through data and AI, with a particular emphasis on creating inclusive technological experiences for
individuals with special needs. She earned his Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech in
2015. Her research and training programs are supported by generous funds from KAIST, NRF, LG and Elice.