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Human-Centered AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings amazing capabilities and challenging risks. Human-centered AI (HAI) works to maximize AI’s benefits and minimize its harms by attending to AI capabilities and their impact on users, service providers, impacted stakeholders, and society at large. This area of research: 

  • Improves AI innovation processes to reduce project failure and bad outcomes
  • Creates new methods for people to interact with computing systems
  • Advances AI Literacy
  • Informs policy and the regulation of AI systems
  • Improves how innovators can team with AI to co-innovate
     

Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that involves training algorithms to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. Applied ML in the context of HAI focuses on designing AI systems with human needs, behaviors, and social contexts in mind.
 

Students who want to learn more about HAI might be interested in the following HCII courses: 

  • a tic tac toe board during mid-game on a grey background, the pieces are shaped like the pink letter X and a yellow letter 0

    From Code to Commands

    NEWS

    Today's generative artificial intelligence models can create everything from images to computer applications, but the quality of their output depends largely on the prompt a human user pro...

  • blue PolicyCraft logo

    PolicyCraft

    PROJECT

    Community and organizational policies are typically designed in a top-down, centralized fashion, with limited input from impacted stakeholders. This can r...

  • side by side headshots of 3 seed grant winners

    Three Seed Grants Awarded for Generative AI and Education Research

    NEWS

    Carnegie Mellon University, as a leader in technology for education, provides tools and methods for CMU and the broader education community through rigorous research and learning science e...

  • Spring 2025 issue of The Link magazine on a bright background. The front cover photo is of 3 young children facing a laptop while sitting at a desk in a classroom

    HCII Highlights in Spring Issue of The Link

    NEWS

    The Spring 2025 issue of The Link magazine from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is now available. "Optimizing Education with AI," introduces several recent res...

  • Sketches and AI generated images of 5 fluid chairs and 5 serene lamps with several examples like lava and clouds inspired by nature

    Human-AI Collaboration Can Unlock New Frontiers in Creativity

    NEWS

    Content churned out by generative AI models is surprisingly competent, if not always particularly exciting....

  • illustration of a person sitting at a desk with 5 computer monitors, in the background there are vertical lines of a white bar chart dark on a moody dark red and black background

    Working With AI

    NEWS

    Chatbot companions, generated videos, banking software and homework help. Artificial intelligence software has found its way into more and more aspects of daily life. But for these systems...

  • CHI 2025 logo of a small illustration of a seaside city, complete with a small ferris wheel

    CMU at CHI 2025

    NEWS

    Our halls are abuzz with talk of “CHI” (pronounced “kai”), the nickname for the upcoming conference on computer human interaction (CHI)....

  • group of 14 SNU and CMU faculty standing in front of a banner that reads Opening Ceremony for the new HCAI center

    CMU Launches Human-Centered AI Research Center with Seoul National University

    NEWS

    Carnegie Mellon University and Seoul National University (SNU) have announced a new collaboration to advance human-centered artificial intelligence research that prioritizes human well-bei...

  • collage of several classroom images for the XR course

    Up Next in Special Topics

    NEWS

    Our Special Topics courses provide the opportunity to explore the future of human-computer interaction, guided by the experts who are shaping the field of HCI....

  • An scene from a virtual reality environment shows a room of animated people in a simulated party environment.

    VR/AR Could Help People Manage Everyday Stressors

    NEWS

    A new project from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute studied whether virtual and augmented reality can simulate stressful situations — like being at a social event with strangers — ...

  • screenshot of the Inkspire interface

    Inkspire

    PROJECT

    With recent advancements in the capabilities of Text-to-Image (T2I) AI models, product designers have begun experimenting with them in their work. However, T2I ...

  • illustration of the proof-of-concept editing interface with map-inspired elements, like district, path and landmark

    VideoMap

    PROJECT

    Video editing is a creative and complex endeavor and we believe that there is potential for reimagining a new video editing interface to better support the crea...