Hari Subramonyan

In this School's In podcast episode, I discuss the intersections of AI, writing, and critical thinking, and reflect on the central role of HCI in designing purpose-built educational tools! Link below:

Check out this great synthesis of the tools for thought workshop we organized at #CHI2025 👇

Screenshot of the special issue website showing title, organizers and links to submit the article. Manuscript deadline is 28th January 2026. Organizers are Srishti Palani, Gonzalo Ramos, Sean Rintel, and Hariharan Subramonmyam

📢 AI is changing the way we create, learn, & reason.
But is it augmenting human cognition, or dulling it?

Please submit your ideas to our #HCI Special Issue: Generative AI in Tools for Thought.

Abstract Deadline: Oct 10, 2025 → tinyurl.com/t4tcfp

Thank you! If possible, would love to chat on zoom, my lab is researching tools for creating interactive learning content.

Would love to learn more about what you are building and the process itself.

Congratulations @momins.bsky.social for your honorable mention award at #CHI2025

Unpredictable Black Boxes are Terrible Interfaces - Prof. Maneesh Agrawala - DSI Join us for the Inequity Speaker Series with Associate Professor Dustin Duncan, from the Department of Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Social and Spatial Epidemiology Unit, Columbia University.

Looking forward to giving a connected pair of upcoming talks!

Apr 14: I'll present Unpredictable Black Boxes are Terrible Interfaces for the Data Science Institute in Toronto

datasciences.utoronto.ca/event/prof-m...

I agree! They should just do that like UIST. In the past I believe CHI only recorded some of the presentations but I could be wrong

I feel you! CHI should get rid of the video presentation or atleast make it optional! It’s way too much work.

📢 Parents! If you know or have high school students interested in STEM, check out this research opportunity. We are inviting high school students to participate in a study on an AI-supported tool that creates interactive STEM simulations for learning! Details below:

If you are a science teacher in the US, please consider participating in our study!! Details below:

Should AI writing tools move beyond chat-based models? What do you think of our layered paradigm? Check out our paper and let us know!! [9/n] @stanfordhai.bsky.social @stanfordgse.bsky.social

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2502.10638

Video Figure: youtu.be/PWr8uEpxOt0

Why layers? Writing isn’t just knowledge telling—it’s knowledge transformation. Instead of rigid back-and-forths, Script&Shift makes writing modular, fluid, and iterative. Layers let you refine ideas, not just rearrange paragraphs, shaping arguments dynamically. [8/n]

Example use case: Need to build a strong argument? Script&Shift lets you drop your draft into an argument template, structuring it into Claim, Evidence, Warrant & Rebuttal. Tear & Combine sections, refine with Structure Sam, and polish with Feedback Felix [7/n]

Calling Tone Tara in Script&Shift from the "/" menu and asking it to convert the writing into a poem. Tone Tara creates 2 new layers as options for desired transformation to choose from.

Example use case: A journalist drafting a feature can test multiple ledes, refine sections with Feedback Felix, adjust tone with Tone Tara, and merge the best parts—all without breaking flow. [6/n]

For shifting, Script&Shift lets you reshape and refine your writing effortlessly. COMBINE layers to merge ideas, TEAR sections apart to explore new structures and STACK & FOLD for better organization. [5/n]

For scripting, Script&Shift gives you AI Writer’s Friends to assist seamlessly. IDEA IVY sparks ideas, DETAIL DANNY expands depth, STRUCTURE SAM organizes, and TONE TARA refines style. [4/n]

Calling Idea Ivy in Script&Shift using the "/" menu and asking it to generate ideas for potential characters in the story. Idea Ivy provides 5 suggestions.

Comparing two layers by moving them side by side and specifying comparison constraint.

The two key interactions:
📝 Scripting → Generate, edit, and refine specific parts of a document
📚 Shifting → Rearrange, combine, or test different structural variations in your writing [3/n]

Our tool Script&Shift reimagines AI-assisted writing with a layered interface, moving beyond rigid chat and inline suggestions. It blends content development & rhetorical strategy, supports non-destructive editing, and enables expressive, iterative writing—all while protecting cognitive flow [2/n].

Script and Shift Interface showing Combining two layers in Script&Shift's spatial interface by overlapping them vertically and supplying merge instructions

Tearing a layer in Script&Shift by selecting the scissor icon in the toolbar and splitting the layer at the desired paragraph

Current AI-assisted writing interfaces are disruptive. They are either too rigid, too complex, or chat-based, forcing writers into an unnatural back-and-forth. Momin @momins.bsky.social developed a new layered interface paradigm that makes AI-assisted writing more intuitive #CHI2025 [1/n] 👇

I am still waiting for their response

FANTASTIC

ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?)

You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have

www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

A screenshot of the first page of an academic figure with a list of authors and a high-level schematic figure describing Cocoa, an interactive system for co-planning and co-execution with AI agents.

🤔Giving complex tasks to AI agents is easy—getting them to do exactly what you want isn’t. How can human-AI collaboration give us more reliable & steerable agents?

🍫Introducing Cocoa, our new interaction paradigm for balancing human & AI agency in complex human-AI workflows. 🧵

fingers crossed🤞

Poster with details on the workshop: Workshop Themes: The workshop invites a multidisciplinary community to explore questions related to Generative AI (GenAI) and human cognition: Relevant theories and perspectives for understanding, protecting, and augmenting human thinking with GenAI. Opportunities and challenges for designing GenAI systems that protect and augment human cognition. Methods to study and measure the impact of current and novel GenAI systems. The impact of GenAI on human skills and workflows. Principles and guidelines for designing GenAI systems to protect and augment cognition. Organizers: The workshop is organized by a group of researchers from institutions like Microsoft Research, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago, Tableau Research, University of Toronto, IBM Research, University College London, and Stanford University. Notable names include: Lev Tanklevitch (Microsoft Research) Elena Glassman (Harvard University) Hari Subramonyam (Stanford University) Goals: To build a community and develop research frameworks, theories, principles, and systems for understanding and designing tools that use GenAI to augment or protect human cognition.

Excited to co-organize this #CHI2025 workshop on Tools for Thought! 🎉 Join us in exploring how Generative AI can understand, protect, and augment human cognition. Submit your work to help shape this critical conversation!

🔗 Details & Submission: aka.ms/toolsforthou...
⏳ Deadline: Feb 13, 2025 (AoE)

Stripes of various colors, corresponding to color words found in BlueSky posts.

See the colors of BlueSky, live!
www.bewitched.com/demo/rainbow...
This little visualization scans incoming posts and draws a stripe every time it finds a color word.

I am recruiting a postdoc! The research emphasis is participatory design for decision-making interfaces. Check out the two project descriptions on my website. people.cs.uchicago.edu/~kalea/prosp...

The position is through UChicago’s Data Science Institute. datascience.uchicago.edu/research/pos...

Thank you! 😊

Hi Dan! Can I please be added? Thanks 🙏🏽

Thank you,Jon! 🦋