Computer Science Seminar: Jaemarie Solyst (Carnegie Mellon University)

Enhancing Youths’ Agency with Culturally Responsive AI Literacy and Engagement Opportunities

The seminar will be available for in-person and Zoom participation.

What does agency with AI look like in an increasingly computational world? In this talk, I spotlight children from marginalized backgrounds. Regularly impacted by algorithms, youth are stakeholders in the future of responsible AI. I present findings from work exploring culturally responsive AI literacy and engagement opportunities with the design and upkeep of AI. In particular, the talk will yield insight about knowledge gaps and culturally responsive ways of supporting AI literacy, such as through fostering critical consciousness and emphasizing design thinking. The talk will then address common notions that are often barriers to youth engaging in responsible AI practices. Findings from this work lay the foundation to focus on not whether but how diverse youth can be included in creating a future of fairer AI. The talk then lends insight for centering marginalized participants in design research workshops. Lastly, I discuss future directions for supporting diverse communities’ agency with AI.

Jaemarie Solyst is a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Her research is at the intersection of human-computer interaction, responsible AI, and learning science. With a commitment to social justice, she focuses on supporting stakeholders' agency with AI by (co-)designing empowering, playful, and informative experiences around computing technology. She is a CERES scholar with the Jacobs Foundation, and her work has received awards at ACM CHI and ACM CSCW.