Kynnedy Simone Smith

I’m a second year PhD Student at the Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute, advised by Prof. Maarten Sap and Prof. Motahhare Eslami. I am honored to be supported by the NSF GRFP, GEM, and CMU Rales fellowships. For the 2026-2027 academic year, I am serving as a Seed Fund Fellow for the CMU Block Center for Technology and Society.

My work spans the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). My current interests include:

culturally-aligned AI tools to support interpersonal communication and collaboration.
tools to support critical reflection while using AI.

Background:

Some highlights of my industry research include collaborating with Danielle Bragg at Microsoft Research where I researched the potential for AI to identify, explain, and correct bias in writing. I also recently worked with MIT Lincoln Lab to develop novel trustworthiness frameworks for Retrieval-Augmented-Generation (RAG) models.

Before my PhD, I graduated with honors from Columbia University, receiving a bachelors in both computer science and cognitive science. My undergrad specializations in AI and human-computer interaction shaped most of my current research interests, along with amazing advising from Prof. Lydia Chilton and Prof. Brian Smith.

Outside of work I am passionate about inspiring underrepresented youth to pursue lifelong scholarship and service through my charitable organization The Dream Scholars.

Fun facts:

🎻 I am a lead violinist on a Nintendo video game soundtrack
🧩 I am an undefeated hula-hoop and foosball champion (email me for battle inquiries!)

News

Oct 2026	I will present my WIP “POV-LENS: Highlighting Positionality Gaps in AI Answers to Mitigate Over-Reliance” at the Text As Data (TADA) conference at UC Berkeley
Oct 2026	Our paper “The Hidden Puppet Master: Predicting Human Belief Change in Manipulative LLM Dialogues” has been accepted to COLM 2026!
May 2026	Honored to become a fellow for the CMU Block Center for Technology and Society 🏆
Apr 2026	I am so excited to present my first, first author paper at CHI in Barcelona, Spain!! “Identifying, Explaining, and Correcting Ableist Language with AI”
Apr 2026	I was accepted as a 2026 NSF GRFP Fellow! 🏆

Selected Publications

CHI

Identifying, Explaining, and Correcting Ableist Language with AI

Kynnedy Simone Smith, L. Chilton, and D. Bragg

In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Apr 2026

DOI Bib

@inproceedings{smith2026ableistlanguage,
  title = {Identifying, Explaining, and Correcting Ableist Language with AI},
  author = {Smith, Kynnedy Simone and Chilton, Lydia B and Bragg, Danielle},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  series = {CHI '26},
  publisher = {ACM},
  month = apr,
  year = {2026},
  pages = {1--17},
  doi = {10.1145/3772318.3790533},
  url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790533},
}

COLM

The Hidden Puppet Master: Predicting Human Belief Change in Manipulative LLM Dialogues

J. Shen, A. Luvsanchultem, J. Kim, and 6 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Language Modeling, Oct 2026

DOI Bib

@inproceedings{shen2026hiddenpuppetmaster,
  title = {The Hidden Puppet Master: Predicting Human Belief Change in Manipulative LLM Dialogues},
  author = {Shen, Jocelyn and Luvsanchultem, Amina and Kim, Jessica and Smith, Kynnedy and Danry, Valdemar and Rogers, Kantwon and Park, Hae Won and Sap, Maarten and Breazeal, Cynthia},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Language Modeling},
  series = {COLM '26},
  month = oct,
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {arXiv},
  doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2603.20907},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20907},
}

CHI

Understanding the LLM-ification of CHI: Unpacking the Impact of LLMs at CHI through a Systematic Literature Review

R. Pang, H. Schroeder, Kynnedy Simone Smith, and 4 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Apr 2025

DOI Bib

@inproceedings{pang2025llmification,
  title = {Understanding the LLM-ification of CHI: Unpacking the Impact of LLMs at CHI through a Systematic Literature Review},
  author = {Pang, Rock Yuren and Schroeder, Hope and Smith, Kynnedy Simone and Barocas, Solon and Xiao, Ziang and Tseng, Emily and Bragg, Danielle},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  series = {CHI '25},
  publisher = {ACM},
  month = apr,
  year = {2025},
  pages = {1--20},
  doi = {10.1145/3706598.3713726},
  url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713726},
}

ASSETS

Understanding Blind and Low Vision Users’ Attitudes Towards Spatial Interactions in Desktop Screen Readers

A. Chheda-Kothary, D. Rios, Kynnedy Simone Smith, and 3 more authors

In The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Oct 2023

DOI Bib

@inproceedings{chhedakothary2023blindlowvision,
  title = {Understanding Blind and Low Vision Users' Attitudes Towards Spatial Interactions in Desktop Screen Readers},
  author = {Chheda-Kothary, Arnavi and Rios, David A and Smith, Kynnedy Simone and Reyna, Avery and Zhang, Cecilia and Smith, Brian A.},
  booktitle = {The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility},
  series = {ASSETS '23},
  publisher = {ACM},
  month = oct,
  year = {2023},
  pages = {1--5},
  doi = {10.1145/3597638.3614490},
  url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3614490},
}