Young adults growing up in the attention economy ' preparing for adult life, with social media and chatbots competing for their attention ' can easily fall into unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. But what if chatbots weren't mere distractions from real life' Could they be designed humanely, as moral partners whose digital goal is to be a social guide rather than an addictive escape' At MIT, a friendship between two professors ' one an anthropologist, the other a computer scientist ' led to creation of an undergraduate class that set out to find the answer to those questions. Combining the two seemingly disparate disciplines, the class encourages students to design artificial intelligence chatbots in humane ways that help users improve themselves. The class, 6.S061/21A.S02 (Humane User Experience Design, a.k.a. Humane UXD), is an upper-level computer science class cross-listed with anthropology. This unique cross-listing allows computer science majors to fulfill a...
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