Human–AI interaction

Human–AI interaction

Human–AI interaction is a developing field of research and a sub-field of human–computer interaction (HCI). HCI is a field of research that explores the interactions between humans and computer-based technology, focusing on design implementation, user experience, and psychological factors. With the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), there has developed a sub-section of HCI research dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence and how people interact with and are impacted by it. This is human–AI interaction, abbreviated either as HAX or HAII. == Introduction == Artificial intelligence (AI), in general, has fluid definitions and varied research applications, but in brief can be applied to mechanizing tasks that would require human intelligence to complete. AI are tools designed to replicate the human abilities of navigating uncertainty, active learning, and processing information in different contexts. Within the context of HCI and HAX research, artificial intelligence can be broken into two sub-fields, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV). AI technologies notably include machine-learning, deep-learning and neural networks, and large-language models (LLMs). As a new and rapidly developing technology, AI is changing how computers work and therefore changing how humans interact with computers. Unlike the traditional human-computer interaction, where a human directs a machine, human-AI interaction is characterized by a more collaborative relationship between the computer program (the AI) and the human user, as AI is perceived as an active agent rather than a tool. This changing dynamic creates new questions and necessitates new research methods that are not present in traditional HCI research. According to a scoping review on the state of the discipline, the HAX field comprises research on the "design, development, and evaluation of AI systems" and encompasses the themes of human-AI collaboration, human-AI competition, human-AI conflict, and human-AI symbiosis. == Design == Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been used for decades in targeted advertising and to recommend content in social media. Ethical Guidelines (Framework for ethical AI development) == User Experience (UX) == This section should handle research on how users interact with tools. What techniques do they use, do they develop habits, what types of programs and devices are they using to access these tools, what do they use these tools to do exactly. === Cognitive Frameworks in AI Tool Users === AI has been viewed with various expectations, attributions, and often misconceptions. Many people exclusively understand AI as the LLM chatbots they interact with, like ChatGPT or Claude, or other generative AI programs. [Insert section: discuss how people interact with these specific AI tools as a connection to the following paragraphs] Most fundamentally, humans have a mental model of understanding AI's reasoning and motivation for its decision recommendations, and building a holistic and precise mental model of AI helps people create prompts to receive more valuable responses from AI. However, these mental models are not whole because people can only gain more information about AI through their limited interaction with it; more interaction with AI builds a better mental model that a person may build to produce better prompt outcomes. Research on human-AI interaction has emphasized that users develop mental models of AI systems and revise those models through repeated use, feedback, and explanation, while design research has stressed the importance of communicating capabilities and limitations early and supporting trust calibration through explanation and correction. In a 2025 SSRN working paper, John DeVadoss proposed "Hypothetico-Deductive Interaction" (HDI), a framework that describes human-AI interaction as a mutual process of conjecture and refutation in which users test assumptions about an AI system's capabilities while the system infers and updates assumptions about user goals through its responses and clarifying questions. DeVadoss argued that this framing helps explain prompt iteration, weak capability awareness, and trust miscalibration, and suggested design responses such as clearer communication of uncertainty, easier correction, actionable explanations, and safer failure modes. == Research themes == === Human-AI collaboration === Human-AI collaboration occurs when the human and AI supervise the task on the same level and extent to achieve the same goal. Some collaboration occurs in the form of augmenting human capability. AI may help human ability in analysis and decision-making through providing and weighing a volume of information, and learning to defer to the human decision when it recognizes its unreliability. It is especially beneficial when the human can detect a task that AI can be trusted to make few errors so that there is not a lot of excessive checking process required on the human's end. Some findings show signs of human-AI augmentation, or human–AI symbiosis, in which AI enhances human ability in a way that co-working on a task with AI produces better outcomes than a human working alone. For example: the quality and speed of customer service tasks increase when a human agent collaborates with AI, training on specific models allows AI to improve diagnoses in clinical settings, and AI with human-intervention can improve creativity of artwork while fully AI-generated haikus were rated negatively. Human-AI synergy, a concept in which human-AI collaboration would produce more optimal outcomes than either human or AI working alone could explain why AI does not always help with performance. Some AI features and development may accelerate human-AI synergy, while others may stagnate it. For example, when AI updates for better performance, it sometimes worsens the team performance with human and AI by reducing the compatibility with the new model and the mental model a user has developed on the previous version. Research has found that AI often supports human capabilities in the form of human-AI augmentation and not human-AI synergy, potentially because people rely too much on AI and stop thinking on their own. Prompting people to actively engage in analysis and think when to follow AI recommendations reduces their over-reliance, especially for individuals with higher need for cognition. === Human-AI competition === Robots and computers have substituted routine tasks historically completed by humans, but agentic AI has made it possible to also replace cognitive tasks including taking phone calls for appointments and driving a car. At the point of 2016, research has estimated that 45% of paid activities could be replaced by AI by 2030. Perceived autonomy of robots is known to increase people's negative attitude toward them, and worry about the technology taking over leads people to reject it. There has been a consistent tendency of algorithm aversion in which people prefer human advice over AI advice. However, people are not always able to tell apart tasks completed by AI or other humans. See AI takeover for more information. It is also notable that this sentiment is more prominent in the Western cultures as Westerners tend to show less positive views about AI compared to East Asians. == Research on the psychological impacts of AI == === Perception on others who use AI === As much as people perceive and make judgment about AI itself, they also form impressions of themselves and others who use AI. In the workplace, employees who disclose the use of AI in their tasks are more likely to receive feedback that they are not as hardworking as those who are in the same job who receive non-AI help to complete the same tasks. AI use disclosure diminishes the perceived legitimacy in the employee's task and decision making which ultimately leads observers to distrust people who use AI. Although these negative effects of AI use disclosure are weakened by the observers who use AI frequently themselves, the effect is still not attenuated by the observers' positive attitude towards AI. === Bias, AI, and human === Although AI provides a wide range of information and suggestions to its users, AI itself is not free of biases and stereotypes, and it does not always help people reduce their cognitive errors and biases. People are prone to such errors by failing to see other potential ideas and cases that are not listed by AI responses and committing to a decision suggested by AI that directly contradicts the correct information and directions that they are already aware of. Gender bias is also reflected as the female gendering of AI technologies which conceptualizes females as a helpful assistant. == Emotional connection with AI == Human-AI interaction has been theorized in the context of interpersonal relationships mainly in social psychology, communications and media studies, and as a technology interface through the lens of hu

Microapp

A microapp is a super-specialized application designed to perform one task or use case with the only objective of doing it well. They follow the single responsibility principle, which states that "a class should have one and only one reason to change." Micro applications help developers create less complex applications while reducing costs by breaking down monolithic systems into groups of independent services acting as one system. A good example of Microapps would be https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/legacy-archive/downloads/microapps.pdfthat provide single purpose action from Salesforce and over 40 applications on its workspace. == Requirements and characteristics == Microapps usually are accessible on any device, display, or operating system without installation on the viewer's device. To qualify as a microapp, the entity must: be built and deployed as an independent software module bring together various media types into a single experience have advanced security and compliance features be functionally-extensible comply with granular data demands be agnostic single use case oriented Microapps differentiate from traditional web or mobile applications by how the end-user interacts with them. Consequently, they can be embedded in websites or viewed online to bypass app stores and are typically built to provide a focused experience to the user. == Usage == Microapps are typically used for commercial purposes to reduce development costs for projects not requiring the large scope of a traditional web or mobile application. In addition, they are often used to showcase in-depth information or enrich marketing material with interactivity. Lately, micro apps are being used to boost productivity by providing quick tools to people to reuse best practices. Users have been interacting with microapps for a while with suites like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, where each one of their end-user services could be considered as a microapp. All these microapps share a unique identity manager to provide a unified user experience. == Benefits == Replacing monolith systems with microapps provide several advantages like: Reduce complexity for developers and users. Smaller, more cohesive, and maintainable codebases Scalable organizations with decoupled, autonomous teams Allows for hyper-specialization Independent deployment Multi-stack == Cloud-native microapps == Technologies like Kubernetes, or OpenShift, allow companies to replace their monolith and legacy systems with modular software taking advantage of microapps on reducing costs and improve reliability and security. == Microapps vs. microservices == There is a widespread misunderstanding between these two concepts, which is the key difference. Microservices is an architectural style that is systems-centric, meaning it decouples the presentation and data layer using web services APIs. On the other side, micro apps behave more as a super-architecture style (that embraces microservices among other types), and it is user-centric, meaning they decouple the whole monolith system onto modules that are designed to interact with final users. Both architectural styles rely on modularity to provide high performance, scalability, and resilience. == Considerations == Developing Micro apps requires a different approach than traditional software, and user experience is crucial. The following considerations are essential for switching to microapps. To run multiple microapps is required a single identity management system. Microservices are well suited to make microapps more powerful Apps with different levels of maturity might create a non-unified user experience. Duplication of dependencies can create security issues and inefficiencies. Suitable for well-organized teams

Render layers

When creating computer-generated imagery, final scenes appearing in movies and television productions are usually produced by rendering more than one "layer" or "pass," which are multiple images designed to be put together through digital compositing to form a completed frame. Rendering in passes is based on a traditions in motion control photography which predate CGI. As an example, for a visual effects shot, a camera could be programmed to move past a physical model of a spaceship in one pass to film the fully lit beauty pass of the ship, and then to repeat exactly the same camera move passing the ship again to photograph additional elements such as the illuminated windows in the ship or its thrusters. Once all of the passes were filmed, they could then be optically printed together to form a completed shot. The terms render layers and render passes are sometimes used interchangeably. However, rendering in layers refers specifically to separating different objects into separate images, such as a layer each for foreground characters, sets, distant landscape, and sky. On the other hand, rendering in passes refers to separating out different aspects of the scene, such as shadows, highlights, or reflections, into separate images.

Screen space ambient occlusion

Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) is a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating the ambient occlusion effect in real time. It was developed by Vladimir Kajalin while working at Crytek and was used for the first time in 2007 by the video game Crysis, also developed by Crytek. == Implementation == The algorithm is implemented as a pixel shader, analyzing the scene depth buffer which is stored in a texture. For every pixel on the screen, the pixel shader samples the depth values around the current pixel and tries to compute the amount of occlusion from each of the sampled points. In its simplest implementation, the occlusion factor depends only on the depth difference between sampled point and current point. Without additional smart solutions, such a brute force method would require about 200 texture reads per pixel for good visual quality. This is not acceptable for real-time rendering on current graphics hardware. In order to get high quality results with far fewer reads, sampling is performed using a randomly rotated kernel. The kernel orientation is repeated every N screen pixels in order to have only high-frequency noise in the final picture. In the end this high frequency noise is greatly removed by a NxN post-process blurring step taking into account depth discontinuities (using methods such as comparing adjacent normals and depths). Such a solution allows a reduction in the number of depth samples per pixel to about 16 or fewer while maintaining a high quality result, and allows the use of SSAO in soft real-time applications like computer games. Compared to other ambient occlusion solutions, SSAO has the following advantages: Independent from scene complexity. No data pre-processing needed, no loading time and no memory allocations in system memory. Works with dynamic scenes. Works in the same consistent way for every pixel on the screen. No CPU usage – it can be executed completely on the GPU. May be easily integrated into any modern graphics pipeline. SSAO also has the following disadvantages: Rather local and in many cases view-dependent, as it is dependent on adjacent texel depths which may be generated by any geometry whatsoever. Hard to correctly smooth/blur out the noise without interfering with depth discontinuities, such as object edges (the occlusion should not "bleed" onto objects). Because SSAO operates only on the current depth buffer, it can miss occluding geometry that is not rasterized into the z-buffer and may produce undersampling-related artifacts.

Visual hull

A visual hull is a geometric entity created by shape-from-silhouette 3D reconstruction technique introduced by A. Laurentini. This technique assumes the foreground object in an image can be separated from the background. Under this assumption, the original image can be thresholded into a foreground/background binary image, which we call a silhouette image. The foreground mask, known as a silhouette, is the 2D projection of the corresponding 3D foreground object. Along with the camera viewing parameters, the silhouette defines a back-projected generalized cone that contains the actual object; this cone is called a silhouette cone. The intersection of the two silhouette cones defines a visual hull. which is a bounding geometry of the actual 3D object. When the reconstructed geometry is only used for rendering from a different viewpoint, the implicit reconstruction together with rendering can be done using graphics hardware. == In two dimensions == A technique used in some modern touchscreen devices employs cameras placed in the corners situated opposite infrared LEDs. The one-dimensional projection (shadow) of objects on the surface may be used to reconstruct the convex hull of the object. Visual hull generation method has also been used within experimental tele-meeting systems that aim to allow a user in a remote location to interact with virtual objects. The method uses multiple cameras to capture the real-world movements and interactions of the "sender", employing hardware-accelerated volumetric visual hull representation to create 3D volume from 2D multi-view images. Its ultimate aim is to allow 3D collaboration between the two users in the virtual realm, with the visual hull technique reducing the computational power required to allow this type of interaction and enabling the use of consumer goods such as the Wii Remote as a tool for interaction.

Plane Finder

Plane Finder is a United Kingdom-based real-time flight tracking service launched in 2009, that is able to show flight data globally. The data available includes flight numbers, how fast an aircraft is moving, its elevation and destination of travel. Several variants of the service are available as mobile apps including free, premium 3D and augmented reality versions. The flight tracking map and database can be accessed by web browsers. Plane Finder allows registered users to share their ADS-B and MLAT data via the Plane Finder ADS-B Client, available for macOS, Windows and Linux. Plane Finder supports VFR charts from NATS, and was the first major flight tracking app to introduce a replay feature, allowing users to replay flights dating back to 2011. == Flight tracking == Plane Finder collects data from its own global network of receivers, using the following sources. === Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) === A network of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receivers gathers aircraft data such as callsign, position and speed. Plane Finder serves to supplement this data with additional information, including aircraft registration/tail number, departure airport, destination, artwork, and photographs. Plane Finder users can apply for an ADS-B receiver in exchange for their flight data. === Multilateration (MLAT) === To deliver aircraft position data where ADS-B is unavailable, Plane Finder uses multilateration (MLAT). Using three or more receivers running Plane Finder client software, monitoring the aircraft simultaneously, the aircraft’s position is calculated using receiver location and accurate timestamps. While European airspace is widely covered, only some parts of North American airspace are covered. === Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) feed === ADS-B is prevalent across Europe and Australia, but not in North America. Where MLAT or ADS-B data is unavailable, a feed from the Federal Aviation Administration provides flight information. The FAA feed covers United States and Canadian airspace, including bordering areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. === FLARM feed === Plane Finder collects data from a centralised FLARM feed, for monitoring small aircraft and gliders. == Flight data source == The Plane Finder website and database is widely used as an information source to support articles in the media. The Independent used Plane Finder flight tracking to demonstrate to readers the flight path of flight MT2706, which turned back as a result of last minute Egyptian government flight restrictions on 6 November 2015. The Independent also used Plane Finder information to demonstrate a timeline of the speed/altitude of flight 7K 9268, a Russian plane which crashed on 31 October 2015. The BBC cited Plane Finder in regard to the point at which at British Airways flight turned back to Heathrow Airport to make an emergency landing after smoke was seen coming from its engines. Plane Finder data has also been used to create original imagery for the media, such as the Washington Post, which used Plane Finder as a source to show flight patterns immediately after the Brussels bombings in March 2016.

Texture atlas

In computer graphics, a texture atlas (also called a spritesheet or an image sprite in 2D game development) is an image containing multiple smaller images, usually packed together to reduce overall dimensions. An atlas can consist of uniformly-sized images or images of varying dimensions. A sub-image is drawn using custom texture coordinates to pick it out of the atlas. == Benefits == In an application where many small textures are used frequently, it is often more efficient to store the textures in a texture atlas which is treated as a single unit by the graphics hardware. This reduces both the disk I/O overhead and the overhead of a context switch by increasing memory locality. Careful alignment may be needed to avoid bleeding between sub textures when used with mipmapping and texture compression. In web development, images are packed into a sprite sheet to reduce the number of image resources that need to be fetched in order to display a page. == Gallery ==