katy ilonka geroMay 15, 2023

Now that I've settled, some thoughts on my time this year at #CHI2023

- I had a great time at the workshop I co-organized on intelligent and interactive writing assistants. (Check out our website! https://in2writing.glitch.me/) I think what made it great was the mix of participants. We tried hard to recruit from HCI, NLP, as well as linguistics, english, rhetoric. We had people who worked on accessibility, creativity, non-native speakers. Diversity is great. We all learned a lot.

in2writing

The First Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants

Show threadkaty ilonka gero
- The difference between the paper session I presented in and my labmates paper session was palpable. I was in a smaller room with similar-ish papers; I felt I had a great audience and the room felt full and energetic. My labmate was in a large room with pretty random papers; he didn't get as many questions and the room felt empty. This was just due to the session we happened to be slotted into; I think our work was equally good!
May 15, 2023 at 8:05pmWeb
Show threadkaty ilonka geroMay 15, 2023
- Work on creative writing reminded me of the tension between creative exploration of new technologies, which is rich and interesting, and the corporate exploitation many new technologies rely on. If I make something really cool and interesting and introspective with ChatGPT, am I effectively whitewashing the inherent problems of OpenAI? Maybe. This makes me sad, because I want to let creative exploration have free reign over technology.
Show threadkaty ilonka geroMay 15, 2023
- Finally, I met a lot of really cool people with similar interests. Technology for creative writing seems to be exploding, or at least getting a lot more popular than it was five years ago. But I don't really have the time to take on new collaborations, so it's a mixed bag. I'm happy to finally find my people! But it's a bummer to not be able to engage with them all very deeply right now.
Show threadkaty ilonka geroMay 15, 2023
Overall I had a shockingly good time at CHI, which in the past has felt super overwhelming. Something clicked this year, and that was really cool to experience.