Topics

The following themes will set the tone for the workshop discussions and attendees' submissions:

  • Detection of Cognitive Biases in People: which methodologies can be deployed to detect cognitive biases in people?
  • Detecting and Overcoming Biases in Systems: how can we challenge the development of filter bubbles? Can artificial intelligence be unbiased? Which algorithms support the development of unbiased systems? Are biases always bad, should some biases be reinforced?
  • Application Scenarios: in which application fields are bias detection and mitigation necessary to ensure unbiased decision making or depolarized discourse? How can HCI research contribute to the deployment of ethical, fair, and unbiased systems?
  • Case Studies: presentation of concrete cases where the prevalence and utilization of biases in systems, societies, people, media, and computing systems have been investigated.
  • Tools and Methods: which modalities enable the quantification of biases, their directedness, and effects? How can tools help to increase self-awareness of biases at work?
  • Creating interventions: how can targets of biased behaviour be protected (through computing systems, regulations, interventions)? How can biased behaviour be prevented, stopped, mitigated through algorithms, system design, interfaces, or agents? Which methods can be used to counteract cognitive biases (e.g., through so-called nudges).
  • Inoculation techniques: the design and creation of systems and methods to help users build resistance against their own biased tendencies. This can include the identification and mitigation of fake news and populist messaging, but also ways to build empathy and critical thinking abilities.

Goals and Outcomes

The goal of the workshop is to foster a research community around the investigation of cognitive biases and how they influence our interactions with computing systems and our susceptibility to messaging in digital media. As a field in the intersection of Computer Science and Psychology, HCI is well suited for contributing in a variety of ways. We are aiming at building a community with a research agenda around detecting, mitigating, and designing for cognitive biases.

With HCI being at the forefront of designing and developing user-facing computing systems, as designers and technologists, we also bear responsibility for increasing awareness of potential issues and working on solutions to mitigate these problems. To foster and educate fellow researchers, and thereby, raise awareness and self-awareness is consequently an essential goal of this workshop. The workshop themes and accepted submissions will be used as starting points for discussions.

The organizers will document the results of the discussions and will make the collected information available to workshop participants and the broader community by means of online repositories and a public website. Outcomes include a detailed research agenda forward and a cross-discipline community of international esteem.