A Design Inquiry into Introspective AI: Surfacing Opportunities, Issues, and Paradoxes

Introspection is the practice of looking inward and examining our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It involves considering past experiences and asking questions about the future. We report on a design research inquiry that explores Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with personal data, as a resource for introspection. We investigate how AI might offer possibilities for generating alternative perspectives on one's life to support introspection and paradoxes that this might raise. We describe our design-led inquiry, motivate fi approaches to introspective practice as opportunities for potential Introspective AI interventions, and explore them through seven design proposals. Taken together, our proposals provoke questions around how introspective AI might be critiqued, imagined, and designed. We conclude with a reflection on our work and the opportunities it suggests for future research and practice.