On Friday, March 14 at 12:00 (room 2203) there will be the conference “The Paradox of Effort in the Era of GenAI: Is Less More?” by researcher Yvonne Rogers, from the Computer Science Department at University College London.

 

Abstract

We often seek ways to reduce effort in our lives as it can be costly; given a choice, we tend to take the one with least effort. I call this productive laziness. At the same time, if we make more of an effort when performing a task, it can be more rewarding. This is known as the paradox of effort. With the widespread appetite for GenAI we are facing a new ‘effort dilemma’: ChatGPT and the like enables us to do things more quickly and complete our tasks with less effort. What is there not to like about this development? The risk is it makes us more lazy, less aware and less connected. How can we design AI so that it deliberately requires us to make more effort so that we engage with our work more deeply and experience a greater sense of achievement? One approach is to slow down how we think and solve problems. To this end, I have begun developing AI with the aim of being more engaging, more effortful and more empowering; through prompting, conjuring up, counter-arguing, probing and even acting as a sparring partner.