The intelligent interactive systems currently designed are typically too inaccurate and cumbersome to be useful; as a result people avoid them in favor of performing tasks manually. Dr. Krzysztof Gajos, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, is designing more user-friendly systems that enable novel ways of interacting with computation. Using machine-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, Dr. Gajos is revolutionizing the way humans and computers interact with one another. The development of useful and predictable interactive systems will benefit education, enhance creative development, and improve computer usability for people with disabilities.

There is difficulty in developing intelligent interactive systems, or systems that combine user interaction and machine learning, that are controllable, useful, and predictable despite the underlying technology being somewhat unpredictable and sometimes incorrect. Harvard University's Dr. Krzysztof Gajos is an Associate Professor of Computer Science working with these technologies to develop useful and efficient interactive systems that are helpful, rather than difficult, for the user.

Dr. Gajos' research is centered around making intelligent interactive systems more predictable and controllable, and therefore more useful, across a variety of disciplines and applications.

1. One of the newest projects in Dr. Gajos' lab is the development of tools that allow communities to share in the collaborative creative experience. Using current methods, a group of 1000 individuals instructed to brainstorm solutions to a problem will yield many duplicate solutions, with the remaining individuals sharing in a widespread variety of possibilities. Dr. Gajos' tool will reduce duplication and assist newcomers in building ideas off of those already brainstormed. This system will reason about the quality and diversity of past solutions to isolate those that may optimally inspire new users and direct them towards creating novel and valuable solutions of their own. This system uses machine learning to help the members of the community get the most inspiration out of each others' ideas.

2. "Lab in the Wild" is a live online platform for engaging the public in experiments whose results can inform the design of future interactive systems. With over two million visitors and one million participants, the platform attracts participants who require neither pay nor supervision, but are incentivized by the personalized feedback provided at the end of each experiment. A simple yet carefully designed system of checks and balances ensures that data collected is as good as data from a traditional supervised experiment. With participants from more than 200 countries, all age groups, and a wide variety of backgrounds, this platform allows collection of data that is representative of the great diversity of cultures, preferences and abilities.

3. In much the same way that a teacher may explain gravity by dropping an object in front of a classroom, social phenomena, cognition, perception and behavior can be explained to students using tools designed by Dr. Gajos. Real-time behavioral experiments showing how people act, reason, and behave are being brought to classroom settings. Having students participate in real-time social experiments and simultaneously analyzing the results offers insight into human cognition, perception and behavior that would otherwise be too counterintuitive or subtle to notice.

4. Dr. Gajos has developed a system, called Supple, that automatically generates user interfaces for individuals with motor impairments. The system first measures each person's individual abilities and then automatically generates new interfaces for existing applications that best match what that person is able to do. Between work, school, commerce, and social activities, people spend eight or more hours a day in front of a computer. With the modern day demand of using computers at such a high frequency, it is not enough to merely make it possible for people with impairments to use computers -- the access also has to be efficient. The Supple system enables individuals with motor impairments to use computers more easily and efficiently than existing accessibility solutions.