Nava Haghighi



About me
Publications, Teaching, Mentorship
LinkedIn
Email





Select projects 


Sensing Multiplicities
    Formal Explorations
Ontologies in Design
Stranj(ers)
    Pulpa
    Horder
    Bran
    Mater
    Nonam
    Skop
Disobedient Agents
Installations, Materials, and Fabrication






Stranj(er) #3: Bran


© Nava Haghighi.  All rights reserved.




Ontologies in Design: How Imagining a Tree Reveals Possibilites and Assumptions in Large Language Models


with Sunny Yu, Daniela Rosner, James Landay

Link to CHI2025 paper Amid the recent uptake of Generative AI, sociotechnical scholars and critics have traced a multitude of resulting harms, with analyses largely focused on values and axiology (e.g., bias). While value-based analyses are crucial, we argue that ontologies---concerning what we allow ourselves to think or talk about---is a vital but under-recognized dimension in analyzing these systems. 
Proposing a need for a practice-based engagement with ontologies, we offer four orientations for considering ontologies in design: pluralism, groundedness, liveliness, and enactment. We share examples of potentialities that are opened up through these orientations across the entire LLM development pipeline by conducting two ontological analyses: examining the responses of four LLM-based chatbots in a prompting exercise, and analyzing the architecture of an LLM-based agent simulation. We conclude by sharing opportunities and limitations of working with ontologies in the design and development of sociotechnical systems.

Prev    Next