Many of us turn to AI to help manage an increasingly fast and unpredictable world, to predict risk, increase efficiency, and offer stability. Yet, the more we use AI to reduce uncertainty, the more another type of risk may arise – an invisible risk to our own cognitive capabilities and human agency in making decisions and making sense of the world.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is a reality already observable in high-stakes domains such as healthcare. Consider a clinician working with an AI diagnostic tool that mediates access to sensory patient data: “embodied expertise” – the tacit, experience-based knowledge that lies at the core of their expertise – risks being atrophied. If we use systems that prioritize short-term efficiency over long-term human learning and sensemaking, we compromise the very expertise we seek to augment.

The popular “human-in-the-loop” architectures proposed to solve this problem are, in fact, an illusory trap. Maintaining meaningful human engagement in highly capable automated systems is incredibly difficult to sustain in practice and requires more not less expertise. To manage uncertainty with true human agency, we must go deeper to understand the tension between exploration – embracing uncertainty to learn and innovate – and exploitation – leveraging known information to maximize short-term rewards.

Join us for an interactive showcase of DIZH-funded innovations, highlighting how active uncertainty management can foster supradisciplinary synergies and drive impactful, human-centered digital development.

Take this opportunity to explore and discuss digital innovations in: 

• Inclusive communication
• Cultural heritage education 
• Design thinking in healthcare
• Artistic approaches to environmental vulnerability 
• Engineering robotic behaviors
• Dependable autonomous navigation

Team up for a fun challenge about digital innovations. 

We wrap up with final reflection.

Continue conversations, connect with collegues, and enjoy drinks and bites.