AImpact Center Seminar: Dr. Kate Donahue, "Opportunities and Challenges in Human-AI Systems."

Event Type

Seminar/Symposium

Sponsor

Prof. Ruta Mehta and Prof. Lena Song

Location

2405 Siebel Center

Virtual

Join online

Date

Oct 2, 2025   11:00 am - 12:20 pm  

Speaker

Dr. Kate Donahue

Contact

Allison Mette

E-Mail

agk@illinois.edu

Phone

217-300-0256

Views

2

Originating Calendar

Siebel School Speakers Calendar

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe prior work and current research in human-AI collaboration, specifically focusing on the role theoretical modeling can play in better understanding when socially desirable outcomes are feasible. In particular, I will discuss the influence that different factors can have, such as human cognitive biases, the way that the human and AI interact, and different levels of accuracy.

First, I will present a stylized model of a strategic decision-maker using an algorithmic tool: a firm using an algorithmic tool to select candidates to hire. Here, we consider a setting where the human decision-maker has access to side information, specifically the employment status of candidates, which gives a noisy signal both candidate quality and candidate availability. The human decision-maker then combines that information with information given by the algorithm’s rankings over candidates in order to decide which candidate to ultimately select. In this setting, we show that counter-intuitive results can occur, such as increased accuracy of the AI tool leading to worse social outcomes, including worse outcomes for the company creating the AI tool itself.

Finally, I will discuss further topics in human-AI collaboration, including settings where the human’s preferences may be misaligned with the AI tool, or there may be misalignment within a population of humans.

This talk is based on work with Bhaskar Ray Chaudhury, Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, Jiaxin Song, Parnian Shahkar.

Bio: Kate Donahue is a METEOR postdoc at MIT, working with Manish Raghavan, and starting in summer ’26 will be an assistant professor of computer science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She works on algorithmic problems relating to the societal impact of AI such as fairness, human/AI collaboration and game-theoretic models of federated/collaborative learning.