Jodi Forlizzi
Professor and Associate Dean Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA
Jodi Forlizzi studies impacts of human interaction with AI systems in front-line service industries including healthcare and hospitality.
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
Jodi Forlizzi on Designing With AI
The Informed Life Podcast online
2024-08-11
Jodi Forlizzi is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Forlizzi has a distinguished career as a service designer, researcher, design leader, and academic. In this conversation, we discuss the changing role of design in the face of disruptive new technologies such as AI.
Carnegie Mellon University experts lent expertise to new U.S. artificial intelligence roadmap
Pittsburgh Business Times online
2024-05-23
As a talent hub for artificial intelligence and robotics, CMU offered unique expertise to ensure the U.S. can realize the transformative potential of AI while ensuring its safe and responsible use.
Jodi Forlizzi, the Herbert A. Simon professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and faculty lead for the Responsible AI Initiative through the university’s Block Center for Technology and Society, testified at the AI Insight Forum on AI Innovation on Oct. 24, 2023. Her statement, which is included in the report released this week, made recommendations to the senators to ensure that innovations in AI are sustainable, responsible and work for workers.
The threat of robot guards is not enough to stop people stealing
New Scientist online
2016-09-02
Team member Jodi Forlizzi at Carnegie Mellon University suggests that even dressing the robot up as a security guard, with dark blue suit and badge, would help. “Really subtle changes in how the robot looks or behaves can drastically influence how people interpret it,” she says.
Intelligent machines: Will we accept robot revolution?
BBC News online
2015-10-07
Jodi Forlizzi, from the US Human-Computer Interaction Institute, puts it down to human nature.
"I think we create narratives and stories about everything in the world: people, robots, spirits, zombies, etcetera that set us in opposition to them," she told the BBC.
Media
Social
Education
Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
Ph.D.
Design and Human-Computer Interaction
2007
Articles
The ``Who", ``What", and ``How" of Responsible AI Governance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of (Actor, Stage)-Specific Tools
FAccT '25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency2025
The implementation of responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) in an organization is inherently complex due to the involvement of multiple stakeholders, each with their unique set of goals and responsibilities across the entire AI lifecycle. These responsibilities are often ambiguously defined and assigned, leading to confusion, miscommunication, and inefficiencies. Even when responsibilities are clearly defined and assigned to specific roles, the corresponding AI actors lack effective tools to support their execution. Toward closing these gaps, we present a systematic review and comprehensive meta-analysis of the current state of responsible AI tools, focusing on their alignment with specific stakeholder roles and their responsibilities in various AI lifecycle stages.
“I Want to Send a Message to My Friend”: Exploring the Shift of Agency to Older Adults in HRI
International Journal of Social Robotics2024
Communication among some older adults is affected by cognitive and mobility impairments. This increases isolation, particularly for those residing in care homes, and leads to accelerated cognitive decline. Previous research has leveraged assistive robots to promote recreational routines and communication among older adults, with the robot leading the interaction. However, older adults could have more agency in the interaction, as robots could extend elders’ intentions and needs. Therefore, we explored an approach whereby the robot’s agency is shifted to the older adults who lead the interaction by commanding a robot’s actions using interactive physical blocks (tangible blocks). We conducted sessions with 22 care home dwellers where they could exchange messages and objects using the robot.
A Vision for Centering Workers in Technology Development
Issues in Science and Technology2024
Artificial intelligence has been hyped in the media and in workplaces, especially since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. In the workplace, AI systems can be used for hiring, disciplining, and firing workers, as well as task assignments, scheduling, and evaluations. AI can also accelerate existing trends in automation and robotics. A 2023 US Census Bureau analysis of 2019 data showed that nearly 30% of all workers, and more than 50% of manufacturing workers, are exposed to technologies that automate tasks. This level of exposure has fed widespread anxiety: 70% of workers are worried about job displacement by AI, according to 2023 polling released by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a federation of 60 unions representing more than 12.5 million working people.
Deepfakes, Phrenology, Surveillance, and More! A Taxonomy of AI Privacy Risks
CHI '24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems2024
Privacy is a key principle for developing ethical AI technologies, but how does including AI technologies in products and services change privacy risks? We constructed a taxonomy of AI privacy risks by analyzing 321 documented AI privacy incidents. We codified how the unique capabilities and requirements of AI technologies described in those incidents generated new privacy risks, exacerbated known ones, or otherwise did not meaningfully alter the risk. We present 12 high-level privacy risks that AI technologies either newly created (e.g., exposure risks from deepfake pornography) or exacerbated (e.g., surveillance risks from collecting training data). One upshot of our work is that incorporating AI technologies into a product can alter the privacy risks it entails. Yet, current approaches to privacy-preserving AI/ML (e.g., federated learning, differential privacy, checklists) only address a subset of the privacy risks arising from the capabilities and data requirements of AI.
Designing for Wellbeing: Worker-Generated Ideas on Adapting Algorithmic Management in the Hospitality Industry
DIS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference2023
Labor shortages have shaped many industries over the past several years, with hospitality experiencing one of the largest rates of attrition. Workers are leaving their jobs for a variety of reasons, ranging from burnout and work intensification to a lack of meaningful employment. While some literature maintains that labor-replacing automation is poised to bridge the shortages, we argue there is an opportunity for technology design to instead improve job quality and retention. Drawing on interviews with unionized guest room attendants, we report on workers’ perceptions of a widely-used algorithmic room assignment system. We then present worker-generated design ideas that adapt this system toward supporting three key facets of wellbeing: self-efficacy, transparency, and workload. We argue for the need to consider these facets of wellbeing through design across the service landscape, particularly as HCI attends to the impacts of AI and automation on frontline work.
Responding to the Indeterminacy of Doctoral Research in Design
She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation2023
The Future of Design Education working group on doctoral education included doctoral supervisors from nine programs around the world and addressed the indeterminacy of standards for the PhD in Design. Internationally, “contributions to knowledge” under the PhD degree title range from evidence-based investigations documented in a dissertation to personal reflections on making artifacts. In some programs, quantitative and qualitative research methods are taught; in others, there is no instruction in methods. The working group suggested that reflection on one’s own creative production is the role of the professional master’s degree and recommended standards for two doctoral programs—the PhD and the Doctor of Design (DDes). The group defined the PhD as addressing unresolved problems with the goal of generalizable knowledge or theory for the field.
Expanding Pragmatism with Symbolic Interactionism: Recounting the Story of Two Frameworks
Design Issues2023
This article describes the story of pragmatism and its transformation into symbolic interactionism at Carnegie Mellon University and Aalto University. In both universities, design researchers were interested in user experience in interactive systems. John Dewey's pragmatism taught them to study how experience sometimes transforms into an experience and occasionally into stories. Herbert Blumer's interactionism had its roots in Chicago School sociology, and it developed in association with pragmatism. His interactionism gave these researchers tools to study Dewey's concepts empirically. We show in the article how this theoretical connection came about after 2000 and how it has shaped research programs in these two communities since then. We also discuss the relevance of pragmatism and interactionism in our current technological landscape, dominated by social media and artificial intelligence.
