This academic proposal advocates for making interaction techniques (IxTs)—the fundamental building blocks of user interfaces like menus and text fields—more intelligent by integrating AI capabilities. The author argues for enabling users to mix interaction modalities freely within a single interface, requiring new research into intelligent interaction techniques and supporting infrastructure, while addressing security, privacy, and economic considerations.
A talk examining collaborative planning with software agents, drawing parallels from anthropologist Thomas Gladwin's study of Chuukese navigators who improvise in real-time versus European navigators who plan rigidly in advance. The speaker, a researcher at GitHub Next, argues that plans are weak resources for real-world action and advocates for better tools enabling humans and agents to plan together collaboratively, moving beyond current isolated CLI-based question-answer interfaces.