The Human Centered AI initiative at UC Santa Cruz represents a groundbreaking collaboration that transcends traditional academic boundaries. Born from the recognition that AI cannot be developed in isolation, our group brings together scholars, researchers, and practitioners from several distinct yet complementary disciplines: Humanities, Psychology, Computer Science, Education, and Computational Media. This unique constellation of expertise enables us to approach AI development holistically, ensuring that technological advancement serves human needs, respects human values, and enhances human capabilities.
Our multidisciplinary approach is not merely organizational—it is foundational to our philosophy. We believe that creating truly human-centered AI requires understanding not only the technical mechanisms of machine learning and computation, but also the ethical implications studied in the Humanities, the cognitive processes explored in Psychology, the creative possibilities investigated in Computational Media, and the robust engineering principles established in Computer Science. By fostering dialogue across these disciplines, we create AI systems that are not only powerful and efficient but also ethical, understandable, and aligned with human flourishing.
At UCSC, we are uniquely positioned to lead this interdisciplinary charge. Our campus culture celebrates boundary-crossing collaboration, and our location in the heart of Silicon Valley provides direct connections to the technology industry while maintaining the critical distance necessary for thoughtful reflection. We are committed to training the next generation of AI researchers and practitioners who can navigate the complex intersections of technology, society, and human experience.
Our Mission
To advance artificial intelligence research and development through sustained multidisciplinary collaboration that enriches scholarship across the Humanities, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and Computational Media. We create a dynamic intellectual community where researchers from different fields engage in meaningful dialogue, share diverse methodologies, and collectively address complex questions at the intersection of technology and humanity. By placing human values, needs, and experiences at the center of our collaborative inquiry, we strive to produce research that is not only technically excellent but also ethically grounded, psychologically informed, culturally aware, and creatively expressed. Through rigorous interdisciplinary discussion, we aim to develop a community that enriches research and collaboration beyond the disciplinary silos.
Our Values
We envision a future where AI serves as a powerful force for human flourishing, developed through vibrant interdisciplinary collaboration that transforms research across all fields. We aspire to be a global model for how sustained multidisciplinary discussion can enrich scholarly inquiry—where humanists bring critical perspectives that sharpen technical research, where computer scientists provide tools that enable new forms of humanistic analysis, where psychologists offer frameworks that enhance both AI design and cultural studies, and where computational media scholars create bridges between artistic expression and algorithmic innovation. We seek to demonstrate that the most transformative AI research emerges not from isolated laboratories but from collaborative spaces where diverse disciplines engage in genuine intellectual exchange. Through our work, we aim to show that interdisciplinary dialogue doesn’t dilute disciplinary expertise—it amplifies it, opening new research questions, methodologies, and possibilities that would remain invisible within single-discipline silos. Ultimately, we envision our group as a catalyst for a new paradigm of collaborative scholarship where the boundaries between fields become sites of creative friction and mutual enrichment.