Vidminas Vizgirda

Co-authored the full paper “Agency in Child–AI Interaction: A Review of How It Is Conceptualised, Studied, and Supported in HCI”, presented by Isobel Voysey at the 25th Interaction Design and Children conference.

The paper reviews 25 recent HCI studies and finds that children’s agency is rarely defined explicitly, with conceptualisations varying between something children innately possess and something to be developed. It maps how researchers observe agency – through children’s planning and self-regulation, asserting control over AI systems, and critique and re-design of the status quo – and the epistemic, interactional, social, and motivational conditions reported to enable or constrain it.

Co-authored the research paper “Defining “Open” Artificial Intelligence in Education: Expert Variations”, presented by Robert Farrow on Monday 22 June under the theme cluster “Reimagining openness: theory, technology, and futures”.

The paper reports our phenomenographic study of how 24 experts in artificial intelligence and open education understand “openness” in educational AI. Stakeholders’ understandings vary widely – some see AI as fundamentally incompatible with openness, some think it possible but not yet achieved, others point to concrete examples they consider open. We identify a framework of increasing complexity, from a binary “open or closed” view, to a linear scale of “how open”, to a multi-dimensional view distinguishing what is open (data, code, model) and to what extent, and finally a contextual understanding incorporating whom those aspects are open to and for what purposes. The aim is to help identify openwashing and support better-informed conversations about open AI in education.

Written with Vi Truong (Charles Sturt University and University of Melbourne) and Robert Farrow (The Open University).

Gave an invited seminar at Vilnius University’s Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of “Dirbtinio intelekto naudojimas studijų procese: iššūkiai ir sprendimo būdai” — their seminar series on “using AI in the study process: challenges and solutions”. The talk was about recent findings from the CHAILD project, titled Vaikų ir paauglių agentiškumas sąveikaujant su generatyviniu DI — “Children’s and teenagers’ agency when interacting with generative AI”.

We discussed the concept of agency, why it is desirable (and limitations to this), as well as what conditions affect agency. I drew on our literature review paper that had been recently accepted at IDC 2026. The session closed with a discussion of what this means for university students and the people teaching them.

Organised and ran the Child-Centred AI-Mediated Collaborative Agency by Design (CAMCAD) workshop, continuing the series of Child-Centred AI workshops at CHI 2023 and 2024. I assembled the team of ten co-organisers, led the proposal writing, ran the website, call for papers, and submission portal, managed peer review of 15 submissions, and coordinated the co-authored post-workshop report.

The workshop opened with a keynote from Professor Netta Iivari (University of Oulu) on fostering transformative agency of children in the age of AI, followed by five invited talks, a poster session with fourteen accepted submissions, and group discussion on design responses to the risks AI poses to children’s agency.

The extended abstract is published in the CHI 2026 Proceedings, and the recordings, accepted submissions, and full workshop report are on the workshop website.

Presented “Child-Centred AI-Mediated Collaborative Agency by Design” at the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance’s Pre-CHI Day, which gives Scotland’s HCI community a chance to see the work heading to CHI.

The talk introduced the CAMCAD workshop and the question behind it: how might AI applications be designed to support collaborative agency between children and the other people in their lives – peers, teachers, and parents?