The Evolution of HCI and Human Factors: Integrating Human and Artificial Intelligence

We review HCI history from both the perspective of its 1980s split with human factors and its nature as a discipline. We then revisit human augmentation as an alternative to user friendliness that seems particularly relevant in the areas of inclusive design and artificial intelligence. Viewing human-AI interaction as a kind of human augmentation raises issues such as how to promote trust and situation awareness. We also pose the question: Can HCI and human factors engineering work together to solve the increasingly urgent challenges of human-AI technology? In an initial look at this question, we contrast the different approaches of HCI and human factors on emerging AI research. This article concludes by considering other potentially promising paths for HCI. We propose more collaboration between HCI and human factors, or related disciplines, in the future to address the massive challenges posed by the rapid growth in data science and artificial intelligence.