Human + AI: Combining AI and Human Expertise

Hear UCI's Hasso Plattner Chair in AI, Padhraic Smyth, on when human + AI teams beat either working alone, plus OC AI networking.
About this Event

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.

Join Orange County engineers, founders, and product leaders for research-grounded talks, open Q&A, light refreshments, and time to meet others working with AI.

Keynote: Padhraic Smyth
Distinguished Professor and Hasso Plattner Chair in AI, 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.

Lightning talk: Hadar Ziv
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Informatics, UC Irvine
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.

Attendees 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

Meet Orange County engineers, founders, and product leaders working with AI. Light refreshments and soft drinks will be provided.

Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County
1 Federation Way, Irvine, CA 92603

Early bird registration closes August 19. Register on only one platform.

Agenda

🕑: 06:00 PM
Doors open, networking
🕑: 06:30 PM
Lightning talk: Hadar Ziv, UC Irvine
🕑: 06:45 PM
Keynote: Padhraic Smyth, UC Irvine
🕑: 07:20 PM
Audience Q&A
🕑: 07:35 PM
Networking