Theme: Joint Human–AI Systems (TDAI Speaker Series)
Speaker: Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez, Carnegie Mellon University
Date & Time: Thursday, November 20, 2025 · 11:00 AM–12:30 PM (ET)
Location: Pomerene Hall Room 350 (Project Zone)
Food: Lunch provided (up to ~50 attendees)
Host: Peter Kvam — kvam.4@osu.edu
The next frontier in AI is not about building more powerful models, it is about creating complementary intelligence between humans and machines. This talk explores how insights from cognitive science can guide the design of AI systems that enhance rather than replace human decision-making. I will introduce the concept of Cognitive AI, which models core human cognitive processes such as learning and decision making, and contrast it with the large-scale optimization focus of Machine AI. I will describe how these paradigms can be integrated to support effective human–AI teaming. Through mechanisms of shared representations, bidirectional goal translation, human-guided training, and coevolution, we can build AI that aligns with human preferences, supports human judgment under uncertainty, and enables adaptive collaboration in dynamic environments. I will provide an overview of a few examples of Cognitive AI systems that illustrate the interaction between Cognitive and Machine AI.
About the Speaker
Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez is a Research Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and founding director of the Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory. Her research focuses on human decision making in dynamic and complex environments, combining behavioral studies with cognitive computational models to support decision-making and training. She is the research co-Director of the NSF National AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) and is affiliated with CMU’s CyLab, HCII, and the Software and Societal Systems Department. She is a 2024 AAAS Fellow, a lifetime Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and serves in editorial roles across multiple journals. Dr. Gonzalez has led numerous multi-year, multi-million-dollar collaborations with government and industry and has published extensively across cognitive science and human–machine teaming.
Links:
• CMU Profile: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/ddmlab/cotyweb/
• Dynamic Decision Making Lab: https://www.cmu.edu/ddmlab
• AI-SDM: https://www.cmu.edu/ai-sdm/