Sachita Nishal
PhD Candidate, Northwestern University
Hi, I'm Sachita, a 4th-year PhD in human-computer interaction and AI @ Northwestern University advised by Dr. Nick Diakopoulos. I design human-centered AI systems that support sense-making and creativity for news reporters as they engage with swathes of information.
In particular, I design systems to support science journalists as they discover, understand, and brainstorm newsworthy stories. I endeavor to align these systems with journalists' professional and ethical values, as well as to center user agency, contextual flexibility, and AI accountability.
I have presented my work at HCI/AI conferences like CSCW, CHI, DIS, and FAccT, as well as at journalism conferences like Big Local News and SRCCON.
You can email me at: nishal [at] u.northwestern.edu
News and Updates
April 2024: I will be at CHI 2024 at the workshop on evaluating interactive AI. Excited to talk about our framework to evaluate AI in the domain of journalism. Here's our preprint and a short blogpost about it!
December 2023: Submitted a larger lit review on the values and design implications that are crucial for designing algorithmic systems in support of journalism. Exciting times to be working on this kind of stuff!
October 2023: Just had a paper accepted to CSCW 2024! We modelled, designed and evaluated an AI-infused interface to support news discovery with a user study. Here's the preprint, and here's a blog post discussing how I tuned and evaluated GPT3 for the project.
Recent Blog Posts
19 Mar 2024: Where the Month Went —
Sortings Things Out, The Algorithm, and Bullshit Jobs
Sorting Things Out, by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Star (2000) —
Lessons on building and changing sociotechnical systems.
2 Feb 2024: Where the Week Went —
The business of the news, new AI regulation, and open-source AI