Q&A: Will the next generation of AI be agents that can shop autonomously?

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

While most people like giving gifts, plenty don’t particularly like shopping for those gifts — drifting through online search results, comparing 4.3 stars to 4.5 stars. But big tech is racing for a future in which artificial intelligence bots can shop for you. Among the buzziest tech this season is a new generation of generative AI agents — systems that can potentially do your shopping, as well as perhaps plan and book your next vacation or schedule a home repair.Amazon reportedly hopes autonomous shopping is the future of its Rufus shopping assistant. Perplexity, another AI company, rel

iSchool's Snyder helps create tools to track marine health

Monday, December 30, 2024

When Tahlequah made headlines across the globe in 2018 for carrying her stillborn orca calf around the Salish Sea for 18 days, she was not just seen as another sign of climate change. She was a mother, and her devastating tour of grief captivated the public and stood as a stark reminder of the similarities between humans and marine mammals. For Jaime Snyder, an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School specializing in visualization studies, images of Tahlequah’s plight revealed a larger opportunity for research. She teamed up with Julia Parrish, a professor

'A warrior for social justice': Helene Williams retires

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

iSchool Teaching Professor Helene Williams asks a lot of tough questions. Who, she challenges Master of Library and Information Science students, are libraries serving? Importantly, who are they not serving? What can libraries do differently to accommodate unheard and underrepresented voices? How can you, as a librarian-in-training, help move the needle?“She is a warrior for social justice,” says former student Twanna Hodge (MLIS ‘15), a Ph.D. student in the College of Information at the University of Maryland. “She endlessly disrupts and dismantles the white, heteronormative, patriarc

Batya Friedman receives Future of Life Award

Monday, December 9, 2024

Trained as a computer scientist in the late 1970s, Batya Friedman has been asking questions about how to live well in the world and how to treat people with dignity and respect. These questions, along with an interest in tools and technology, drew Friedman to ask herself how she could build something that would be more likely to contribute in a positive way.The result was Value Sensitive Design.In the 1990s, Friedman developed Value Sensitive Design (VSD), a framework that systematically integrates human values into the technological design process. Central to this approach is the engagement o

iSchool's Wobbrock honored with Lasting Impact Award

Friday, December 6, 2024

Professor Jacob O. Wobbrock and two colleagues recently were recognized with the prestigious ACM User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) Lasting Impact Award for a paper that became a foundation of gesture-recognition technology.The highest honor the conference bestows, the ACM UIST Lasting Impact Award annually recognizes a paper that is at least 10 years old for its measurable impact on the field of technical human-computer interaction (HCI).Published in 2007, the $1 Unistroke Recognizer , also known as the $1 Gesture Recognizer, remains a foundational contribution to HCI. Seventeen ye

No problem too heavy for Ashley Farley, '17

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

At her desk and in the gym, Ashley Farley is drawn to difficulty. She tackles intractable problems within the academic publishing industry in her role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her favorite weightlifting move is the notoriously technical and humbling snatch. In both pursuits, progress is incremental. “I love the challenge of the snatch,” she said. “If you improve your lift by, maybe, one pound a year, you’re excited.”This mindset drives Farley’s work at the Gates Foundation, where she advocates for accessible and freely disseminated scholarship. As s

UW experts share advice for responding to online harassment

Monday, November 25, 2024

According to a 2021 Pew Research study, 41 percent of U.S. adults have personally experienced some form of online harassment. The latest statistics from SafeHome.org indicate that as many as 7.5 million people experience online harassment each year, and approximately 41 percent of undergraduate students have experienced it.Research shows that scholars have increasingly become targets for online harassment; however, anyone with access to the internet can be a victim. It is essential for the community to understand how to respond to online harassment and how to support loved ones

BINFO builds community for Black students in Informatics

Friday, November 8, 2024

For Informatics students Thomas Emnetu and Ahmed Ghaddah, the search for belonging and community on campus led to something greater than themselves. In fall 2023, they co-founded Black in Informatics (BINFO), a student organization dedicated to fostering the professional, academic and personal development of Black students in the iSchool’s Informatics program. Within just a year, BINFO has grown to around 100 students and expanded to attract participants from across various programs, including Computer Science and Human-Centered Design and Engineering. The idea for BINFO came to Em

Step by step, professor makes health tracking more inclusive

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

More than a third of Americans now use health-care apps and wearable devices, tracking everything from walking steps, heart rates, caloric intake and running speeds to daily moods, hourly medications and monthly fertility cycles. For users with disabilities — the blind person who cannot read a touchscreen at the gym or the older person whose slow gait is inaccurately recorded on a wearable device — the tracking tools can be a frustrating mismatch. This year’s UW iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award honoree, Eun Kyoung Choe (Ph.D. ’14), is taking on these challenges, helping to desig

AI tools show biases in ranking job applicants’ names according to perceived race and gender

Monday, November 4, 2024

The future of hiring, it seems, is automated. Applicants can now use artificial intelligence bots to apply to job listings by the thousands. And companies — which have long automated parts of the process — are now deploying the latest AI large language models to write job descriptions, sift through resumes and screen applicants. An estimated 99% of Fortune 500 companies now use some form of automation in their hiring process.This automation can boost efficiency, and some claim it can make the hiring process less discriminatory. But new University of Washington research found significant ra

Illustrator Christian Robinson charms crowd at Shaw Lecture

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Using his drawings of anxiety, inspiration and lobsters, illustrator Christian Robinson told his story about telling stories.  Robinson presented at the UW HUB and over Zoom on Oct. 24 for the iSchool’s 32nd annual Spencer G. Shaw Lecture, the first in-person edition of the event since 2019. Before an audience of 460 registrants, Robinson told his personal story titled, “You Are Here: Finding yourself in picture books.”From the moment Robinson began speaking, the audience instantly engaged with his charisma, personable wit and most significantly, his drawing of a lobster.H

iSchool adds expert in digital access to faculty

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Benjamin Charles Germain Lee has a wide background of work — astrophysics, work with archives, machine learning, writing for popular magazines like The New Republic — and he is now bringing those skills and diverse research interests to his new role as an assistant professor at the iSchool, where he will launch the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage. The lab will adopt an interdisciplinary approach — one of Lee’s strengths — to work with libraries, archives and museums to address challenges facing digital access. The lab will bring together work on machine learning, d

Center for an Informed Public educates community about election rumors

Friday, October 25, 2024

The 2024 election cycle is accompanied by a wave of rumors surrounding policies and candidates. Some of these rumors may hold truth, while others are false or unsubstantiated. To address this, the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) is working to educate about these rumors through its election blog series, a journalism help desk and public talks to the university community. “Primarily what we're trying to understand is how different communities, whether that's online or offline, are thinking and talking about the election and the kinds of things around election procedures and processes

Libraries, museums, archives unite in new research center

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

More than two dozen Information School faculty and Ph.D. students are exploring diverse systems of knowledge and how they are produced, collected and accessed. Their work contributes to how libraries, museums and archives adapt to serve their communities.Since scholarship involving these cultural institutions is so wide-ranging, it can sometimes happen in siloes when collaborations would be more fruitful. A new center housed at the iSchool intends to bring that work together.The Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums and Archives (CALMA) is charged with creating a community around research

Illustrator Christian Robinson to share power of stories

Thursday, October 17, 2024

The artist and author will visit Oct. 23-24 for a film screening and the annual Spencer Shaw Lecture.Illustrator Christian Robinson's art resonates with audiences of all ages, fostering connection and understanding in our diverse world. He gravitates toward narratives that are often overlooked.“I am drawn to stories that are challenging in some ways,” Robinson said. “I'm drawn to those stories that I wish I had myself as a child growing up, stories that would help me make sense of the world, process the world, understand myself better and also give an opportunity to make my classmates or