Meredith Morris
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Meredith Morris is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington in The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and also in The Information School. She also has substantial industrial research experience, having held research scientist and related leadership roles at Google and Microsoft.
Her areas of technical expertise include human-centered AI, human-AI interaction, societal impacts of AI, human-computer interaction, accessible technologies, social computing, information retrieval, and gesture design.
Dr. Morris has been recognized as a Fellow of the ACM and as a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy for her contributions to Human-Computer Interaction research. She earned her Sc.B. in computer science from Brown University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.
Meredith Morris joins the Paris IAS in May 2026 for a one-month writing residency.
Research topics
Computer Science; Artifical Intelligence; human-centered AI, human-AI interaction, societal impacts of AI.
AI Centrism: Promoting Nuance in Polarized Technological Discourse
Public discourse about generative Artificial intelligence (AI) has become highly polarized by Hype, Doom, and Denial.
AI Hypers express excessive optimism about the likely rate of progress both in terms of model capabilities and societal adoption; AI Hype is often associated with prognostications of a utopian society in which all labor is automated and everyone lives a life of leisure supported by universal basic income. AI Doomers, on the other hand, express extreme pessimism about the trajectory of AI due to concerns about existential risk AI may pose to humanity. Finally, AI Deniers insist that AI technologies are not “intelligent,” often focusing on semantic arguments about terminology rather than on the practical impacts and adoption of AI by real end-users. Deniers argue that focusing on AI development wastes resources that could be better used on other societal needs.
This project will explore the aspects of the tech industry, academia, and our media ecosystems that lead to the polarization of attitudes around AI. It will discuss the importance of curating “AI Centrism” as a nuanced framework for understranding key issues in the technology and policy space, and reflect on how AI Centrism can support more nuanced AI literacy for policymakers, business leaders, and end-users so they can make considered decisions about likely near-term and long-term impacts of AI. The project will reflect on how structural changes in our industry, academic, and media environments can promote more nuanced assessments of the current and future state of AI development and societal impact.
Key publications
Morris, M.R., Sohl-Dickstein, J., Fiedel, N., Warkentin, T., Dafoe, A. Faust, A., Farabet, C., and Legg, S., "Levels of AGI for Operationalizing Progress on the Path to AGI", Proceedings of ICML, 2024.
Morris, M.R, "HCI for AGI", ACM Interactions, March/April 2025.
Morris, M.R. and Brubaker, J.R, "Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlives", Proceedings of CHI, 2025.
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