Human + AI: Combining AI and Human Expertise
Padhraic Smyth, Distinguished Professor and Hasso Plattner Chair in AI at UC Irvine, will show when human and AI teams outperform either working alone, and how to decide which calls belong with people and which belong with the model.
Ideal for engineers, founders, product leaders, researchers, and students working with AI. Whether you are shipping AI in production or just starting to explore it, you are welcome.
🎤 Speakers
Padhraic Smyth
Distinguished Professor and Hasso Plattner Chair in AI at UC Irvine. Fellow of ACM, AAAI, IEEE, and AAAS. Academic advisor to Netflix for the Netflix Prize.
AI models are being used to augment, and sometimes replace, human decision-making everywhere from autonomous driving to diagnostic medicine to code generation. Yet full AI autonomy is often not the right answer, for safety, legal, and cognitive reasons. Padhraic will present recent work from his research group on human-AI collaboration: combining human and AI predictions so the pair beats either alone, and learning which tasks to route to people and which to AI agents. Bring the question your team is arguing about for the open Q&A.
Hadar Ziv
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Informatics, UC Irvine. Lightning talk: Student Perceptions of AI in Computer Science Education.
Hadar's team surveyed large cohorts of CS students in 2023, 2024, and 2026 about how they perceive and use AI in their coursework. He will share the top outcomes, including how student attitudes shift across the four years.
🗓 Agenda
6:00 PM · Doors open, networking
6:30 PM · Lightning talk: Hadar Ziv
6:45 PM · Keynote: Padhraic Smyth
7:20 PM · Open audience Q&A
7:35 PM · Networking until 8:00 PM
You will leave with a clearer understanding of:
- When combining human and AI judgment beats either working alone
- How to divide real work between people and AI agents, grounded in research
- How UCI computer science students perceive and use AI, measured across three survey years
📍 Logistics
Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County, 1 Federation Way, Irvine. Light refreshments and soft drinks will be provided.
🎟 Tickets
Early Bird $22 through August 19. Standard $26. Reserve your spot below.