HCI Seminar 2/20, Terry Winograd, Stanford, What's up with AI?

[Herb Jellinek]

This is open to anyone who can make it to Gates Hall at Stanford this Friday, and a recording ought to be posted to YouTube shortly after that.

                Herb

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	HCI Seminar 2/20, Terry Winograd, Stanford, What's up with AI?
Date:	Mon, 16 Feb 2026 14:30:00 +0000
From:	Diyi Yang via pcd-seminar <pcd-s...@lists.stanford.edu>

What's up with AI? 

Terry Winograd, Stanford

Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)

Feb 20, 2026, 11:30am-12:30pm PT

Gates B1

https://hci.stanford.edu/seminar

Open to the public · Previous talks are online at https://hci.st/547youtube 

Abstract:

The current boom in AI has been accompanied by tremendous hype, both negative and positive. My goal is to go beneath this surface and provide a better understanding of what AI systems are actually doing, and what concerns we should have about where they are going. I am neither a doomer nor a booster. The very real problems created by AI today and in the foreseeable future need to be approached by considering the ways we (as a society) choose to apply it and the ways in which it can fit into our world. The bottom line is that we need to approach all of the issues with the recognition that large language models and similar systems have no real understanding or intention, even though they often promote the illusion that they do. They can still be useful in many contexts, as long as we recognize the need for humans to always provide the foundation of care.

Bio:

Terry Winograd is Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Stanford, where he created and directed for 20 years the Human-Computer Interaction Group and the teaching and research program in Human-Computer Interaction Design. He is also a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) and of the Liberation Technology Project at the Center for Development, Democracy, and the Rule of Law. He has been a consultant to Google, a search engine company founded by Stanford students he advised. They and many others of his students have created companies and taken on leadership in Silicon Valley over the years.

 

His early research on natural language understanding by computers (SHRDLU) was the basis for two books and numerous articles.  The book "Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design" (Addison-Wesley, 1987, co-authored with Fernando Flores), took a critical look at work in artificial intelligence and suggested new directions for the integration of computer systems into human activity.  He edited "Bringing Design to Software" (Addison-Wesley, 1996), which introduced a design thinking approach into the design of human-computer systems.

 

In the d.school he developed courses and research in designing mobile communication technologies for health and development in the developing world, including a design course taught for several years in conjunction with the University of Nairobi.

 

Winograd was a founding member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, of which he was national president from 1987-1990. He was elected to the ACM CHI Academy in 2003, became an ACM Fellow in 2010, and received the CHI Lifetime Research Achievement Award in 2011.  He is on the board of Corporate Responsibility International. In 2018 he received the American Jewish World Service Global Justice Award.

He has been married for 57 years to Carol Hutner Winograd, MD, Professor Emerita of Medicine at Stanford.  They have two daughters, Rabbi Shoshana Ohriner, and Avra Durack.  They are blessed to have five grandsons living nearby.

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Diyi Yang

Assistant Professor

Computer Science Department

Stanford University

https://cs.stanford.edu/~diyiy/