Vera Liao

@qveraliao@hci.social
66 Followers
18 Following
10 Posts
Researcher @ Microsoft Research FATE group studying human-AI interaction. She/her.

@jenn @qveraliao @PrincetonCS @hci @citp

"Fostering Appropriate Reliance on LLMs" received an Honorable Mention at #CHI2025

This work is also the last chapter of my dissertation, so the recognition feels more specialπŸ…πŸŽ“πŸ˜Š

πŸŽ‰ to the team!!!

https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/188664

Conference Programs

Appropriate reliance is key to safe and successful user interactions with LLMs. But what shapes user reliance on LLMs, and how can we foster appropriate reliance?

In our #CHI2025 paper, we explore these questions through two user studies.

1/7

As #AI gains a growing space in creation and art, how are the public discourses on AI in the arts shaping creative work?

It what we investigate in a new paper with @Katecrawford, @qveraliao, Gonzalo Ramos and Jenny Williams: arxiv.org/abs/2502.03940

🧡 [1/n]

All AI systems make mistakes.

🧐 What if users could leverage AI flaws to understand it & take informed actions?

πŸš€ Our #CSCW2024 paper on Seamful XAI offers a process to foresee, locate, & leverage AI flawsβ€”boosting user understanding & agency.

πŸ“œ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.06753

But why should you care?‡️
1/n

w/ @Riedl @hal Samir Passi @qveraliao #academia #HCI

New paper to share! πŸ“£ @qveraliao and I lay out our vision of a human-centered research roadmap for β€œAI Transparency in the Age of LLMs.”

https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.01941

There's lots of talk about the responsible development and deployment of LLMs, but transparency (including model reporting, explanations, uncertainty communication, and more) is often missing from this discourse.

We hope this framing will spark more discussion and research.

Attempting my first mastodon thread below... 🧡

AI Transparency in the Age of LLMs: A Human-Centered Research Roadmap

The rise of powerful large language models (LLMs) brings about tremendous opportunities for innovation but also looming risks for individuals and society at large. We have reached a pivotal moment for ensuring that LLMs and LLM-infused applications are developed and deployed responsibly. However, a central pillar of responsible AI -- transparency -- is largely missing from the current discourse around LLMs. It is paramount to pursue new approaches to provide transparency for LLMs, and years of research at the intersection of AI and human-computer interaction (HCI) highlight that we must do so with a human-centered perspective: Transparency is fundamentally about supporting appropriate human understanding, and this understanding is sought by different stakeholders with different goals in different contexts. In this new era of LLMs, we must develop and design approaches to transparency by considering the needs of stakeholders in the emerging LLM ecosystem, the novel types of LLM-infused applications being built, and the new usage patterns and challenges around LLMs, all while building on lessons learned about how people process, interact with, and make use of information. We reflect on the unique challenges that arise in providing transparency for LLMs, along with lessons learned from HCI and responsible AI research that has taken a human-centered perspective on AI transparency. We then lay out four common approaches that the community has taken to achieve transparency -- model reporting, publishing evaluation results, providing explanations, and communicating uncertainty -- and call out open questions around how these approaches may or may not be applied to LLMs. We hope this provides a starting point for discussion and a useful roadmap for future research.

arXiv.org

Join the 2nd Explainable AI for CV (XAI4CV) workshop at #CVPR2023!
https://xai4cv.github.io/workshop_cvpr23

πŸ‘₯ The workshop will take place on June 19th in Vancouver, Canada. More to follow on in-person/hybrid setup

🎀 We have a fantastic line-up of speakers: @qveraliao, Mohit Bansal, Marina M.-C. Hâhne (née Vidovic), @arvind, Alice Xiang, and @davidbau

πŸ“„ Submit papers and demos by March 14th (proceedings track) and May 19th (non-proceedings track)

We are accepting applications for a postdoc job with us at MSR in Cambridge MA. Super sweet gig, link to apply is here

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/1488454/Post-Doc-Researcher-Socio-Technical-Systems-Microsoft-Research

Post Doc Researcher – Socio-Technical Systems – Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States | Research, Applied, & Data Sciences at Microsoft

Apply for Post Doc Researcher – Socio-Technical Systems – Microsoft Research job with Microsoft in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Research, Applied, & Data Sciences at Microsoft

Microsoft
πŸ“’The FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparenfy and Ethics in AI) group at Microsoft Research Montreal is hiring interns for 2023! Looking for candidates with broad FATE interests including responsible NLP/NLG, human-centered AI, AI transparency and explainability, and future of work. Apply here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/1488252/Stagiaire-de-recherche-FATE-Research-Intern-FATE-Montreal-Fairness-Accountability-Transparency-and-Ethics-in-AI
#FATE #HCI #AI #NLP
Γ—

Appropriate reliance is key to safe and successful user interactions with LLMs. But what shapes user reliance on LLMs, and how can we foster appropriate reliance?

In our #CHI2025 paper, we explore these questions through two user studies.

1/7

First, through a think-aloud study (N=16) in which participants use ChatGPT to answer objective questions, we identify 3 features of LLM responses that shape users' reliance: #explanations (supporting details for answers), #inconsistencies in explanations, and #sources.

2/7

Then, through a pre-registered, controlled experiment (N=308), we isolate and study the effects of these features on users' reliance, accuracy, and other measures, such as confidence, source clicking, task time, evaluation of LLM responses, and asking of follow-up questions.

3/7

We find that the presence of #explanations increases reliance on both correct and incorrect LLM responses.

This isn't surprising, given prior HCI/Psychology work on other types of explanations, but raises the question whether LLMs should provide explanations by default πŸ€”

4/7

On a more optimistic note, we observe less overreliance on incorrect LLM responses when accurate and relevant #sources are provided or when explanations from LLMs exhibit #inconsistencies (i.e., sets of statements that cannot be true at the same time).

5/7

We provide an in-depth discussion of our findings, bringing together the AI, HCI, and Psychology literature. We also contribute nuanced insights on people's interpretation of explanations from LLMs (e.g., are they faithful or not?), source clicking behavior, and more.

6/7

This work is with @jenn, @qveraliao, Tania Lombrozo, and Olga Russakovsky, a fantastic collaboration between @PrincetonCS, @hci, @citp, Princeton Psychology, and Microsoft Research FATE 🀝

A few of us will be at #CHI2025 in person!

πŸ“„ https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08554

7/7

Fostering Appropriate Reliance on Large Language Models: The Role of Explanations, Sources, and Inconsistencies

Large language models (LLMs) can produce erroneous responses that sound fluent and convincing, raising the risk that users will rely on these responses as if they were correct. Mitigating such overreliance is a key challenge. Through a think-aloud study in which participants use an LLM-infused application to answer objective questions, we identify several features of LLM responses that shape users' reliance: explanations (supporting details for answers), inconsistencies in explanations, and sources. Through a large-scale, pre-registered, controlled experiment (N=308), we isolate and study the effects of these features on users' reliance, accuracy, and other measures. We find that the presence of explanations increases reliance on both correct and incorrect responses. However, we observe less reliance on incorrect responses when sources are provided or when explanations exhibit inconsistencies. We discuss the implications of these findings for fostering appropriate reliance on LLMs.

arXiv.org

@jenn @qveraliao @PrincetonCS @hci @citp

"Fostering Appropriate Reliance on LLMs" received an Honorable Mention at #CHI2025

This work is also the last chapter of my dissertation, so the recognition feels more specialπŸ…πŸŽ“πŸ˜Š

πŸŽ‰ to the team!!!

https://programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/program/content/188664

Conference Programs