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SUMMARY:From the GUI to ChatGPT: a historical sketch of HCI research agend
 as and their applicability today - Professor Richard Harper - Lancaster Un
 iversity
DTSTART:20230503T140500Z
DTEND:20230503T145500Z
UID:TALK199384@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ben Karniely
DESCRIPTION:Bill Gates has recently remarked that ChatGPT-4 is as revoluti
 onary as the GUI was thirty years ago.  Will it be? To assess that claim I
  want to trace the connection between the HCI research that lead to the GU
 I and the research that needs to be done with large language models and th
 eir chatbox interfaces today. I will explore how interactions with GUIs an
 d LLMs have basic properties in common - various kinds of abstract notions
  about content (in the case of GUIs about the things represented graphical
 ly and in the case of LLMs\, the thing being modelled)\; how these abstrac
 tions are also engineered into the systems themselves\; and in their ‘ab
 outness’ to put it in Peirce-like terms\, i.e.\, what they are for\, bei
 ng visible and known to both users and engineers alike. In the case of the
  Xerox GUI\, this aboutness had to do with document editing\; with LLMs it
  is\, in my view\, still evolving and unclear\, even contested. These assu
 mptions may be said to constitute the grammar of action with GUIs and LLMs
 . Having explored these and other grammars of action with computer systems
 \, I will suggest the grammar of action with LLMs need further development
 \, and that without HCI research in this regard the revolution that Gate
 ’s alerts us to is unlikely to be the one he expects and nor with all th
 e benefits he seems to imply.  \n\nResearch for this presentation derives 
 from the preparation of Richard’s latest book\, The Shape of Thought’ 
 (McGill Press). \n\nPrior to this book\, Richard has written 19 others\, i
 ncluding the Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT)\, Texture: human expressio
 n in the age of communications overload (MIT)\, Choice: the sciences of re
 asoning in the 21st Century (Polity)\, and Skyping the Family (Benjamins).
  He has spent most of his research career in and around Cambridge\, having
  worked at Xerox EuroPARC and then Microsoft Cambridge. He is currently di
 rector of the Leverhulme Centre for Material Social Futures at Lancaster U
 niversity. \n\n\nLink to join virtually: https://zoom.us/j/98901725392?pwd
 =UWNVZVFTcVQxL2JkS0V1WVBoelBuUT09\n\nA recording of this talk is available
  at the following link: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/seminars/wednesday/video/
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
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