IJCAI Special Track:
Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Contours and Challenges of Next-Generation AI Research and Applications
Submissions are solicited for the IJCAI 2025 Special Track on Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence (HAI). The special track aims to explore the multidisciplinary scientific contours and challenges of next-generation artificial intelligence research and its applications in real-world contexts.
The special track welcomes and aims to inspire a multifaceted perspective on approaching next-generation Human-Centric AI Research primarily, but not exclusively, at the confluence of formal, computational, and cognitive aspects on the one hand, and social, cultural, and ethico-legal dimensions influencing AI development and their application on the other hand.
The special track welcomes original research that:
· Recognises and articulates a nuanced view of computational intelligence in relation to the depth, diversity and multi-faceted nature of `human intelligence’ in diverse naturalistic real-world problem solving, as well as in everyday human activity and interaction contexts. We welcome demonstrated and systematically evaluated computational models of one or more aspects of human-intelligence, be it with or without the integration of diverse AI techniques/methods.
· Concretely addresses the practical `AI design implications’ emanating from the (human-centric) cognitive, social, ethical and legal dimensions driving AI/ML methodological developments. By design, implied are questions pertaining to human-centric AI engineering, deployment, usability, evaluation, benchmarking, and standardization of AI/ML techniques. Such AI-design may be pursued, for instance, in the explicit backdrop of emerging AI regulation, or it may be conceptually rooted (and `systematically’ justified) vis-à-vis social and ethical considerations identifiable in a specific task/context or application domain.
Integrative research efforts combining computational methods with behavioural or empirical techniques aimed at exploiting synergies in the study of artificial and human intelligence are also welcome, as long as the technical novelty from the viewpoint of AI method development is clearly articulated and evaluated, and constitutes the key aspect of the submitted work.
FOCUS / AI, Human Cognition, and Embodied Interaction.The 2025 edition of the special track focusses (though not exclusively) on the role of `Human Cognition’ and `Embodied (Multimodal) Interaction’ in diverse naturalistic settings for the design and development of next-generation foundational methods and techniques in AI and ML.
By `Humans’ and `Human Cognition’, entailed are human behaviours, preferences and expectations, decision-making, multimodal interaction modalities, problem-solving skills (etc) as relevant from perspectives such as (a) Human perception and cognition; (b) Society and culture; (c) Ethics and emerging AI-related regulatory compliance; and (d) Standardization. Here, the special track will particularly prioritise research focussed on human-behavioural studies involving quantitative and/or qualitative empirical analyses of human-behaviour in naturalistic settings as a means to systematically influence the design of human-centred AI methods. Also in focus are specific technical implications for the (human-centric) design of AI in applications relevant to, for instance:
· Human (in-the-loop) assistance and collaborative autonomy in everyday life and professional work contexts (e.g., autonomous and assisted driving, human-robot collaboration, social interaction between human and robots)
· Clinical or medical practice (e.g., involving cognitive diagnosis, rehabilitation, multimodal neurocognitive imaging, neuroethics)
· Collaborative problem-solving for engineering design synthesis, discovery, diagnostics, creativity etc. (e.g. architecture design, media design)
· Entertainment computing (e.g., AI-driven digital visuo-auditory media synthesis)
· Media (e.g., disinformation and fake news mitigation, AI in education)
The above application areas are merely indicative, and by no means exhaustive. We welcome all systematically investigated AI application contexts that have not been explicitly mentioned in this call.
HAI SPECIAL TRACK FORMAT –AND– SELECTION
The special track will:
- Focus selectively and exclusively on novel, unpublished technical works articulating the challenges and demonstrated solution methodologies relevant to next-generation human-centred AI research.
- Prioritise those works that are truly interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary, or include an integration of multiple techniques –e.g., computational and behavioural/empirical– from within and beyond areas such as AI/ML, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Human-Factors.
- As long as the inter/multidisciplinary motivations are full-filled, the track will also prioritise works that integrate methods from sub/related communities of AI that have traditionally come to operate rather independently (e.g., Vision and AI, AI and Robotics, AI and Cognitive Science).
Please do note that the special track does not encourage:
- Purely opinion-based position statements that may otherwise have no chance of being accepted at IJCAI Technical Track.
- Basic human behavioural research alone, e.g., conducted from mono-disciplinary viewpoints of cognitive psychlogy, cognitive neuroscience, human-factors etc, without any explicit relation/implication to AI methods design, development, or evaluation.
- Computational research alone pertaining to some aspect of AI/ML where the human-centred underpinnings and motivations are not unambiguously and systematically articulated as per the methodoogical motivations of this special track (such work may be better suited for the IJCAI 2025 tehnical track).
REVIEW PROCESS AND FINAL NITIFICATION
In the backdrop of the thematic focus of the special track, the technical reviewing process will proceed as follows for every eligible paper fulfilling the mandatory submission requirements:
- Papers will be first checked for relevance and compliance with respect to the themes and focus areas of the HAI special track. If a paper is not considered relevant to the special track, it will not undergo a full peer review and be marked as “Out of scope’’. Also note that “out of scope” papers cannot be transferred to the technical track or other tracks at IJCAI 2025 (therefore, please carefully determine the suitability of your paper for the HAI track vs. the general technical track).
- Papers declared `in-scope’ or fitting to the theme and focus of the special track will undergo a peer-review and will be evaluated based on aforestated criteria,and general aspects such as novelty and originality of ideas, correctness, clarity, and the significance of results, potential impact and quality of the presentation etc.
!! Important !! – Results of both `in-scope’ and `out of scope’ papers will be announced to contributing authors only at the end of the overall review period. By submitting a paper, submitted authors would acknowledge that they are aware of this process, and that under no circumstance would the authors receive any indication of the status of their paper till the final notification deadline.
IMPORTANT DATES IN 2025
(All times are 23:59 Anywhere On Earth, UTC-12)
- Author info, abstract, motivation statement, and full paper: February 11
- Appendix – resubmission information: February 18
- Final paper notification: April 28
Submission site:
Papers should be submitted to https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/IJCAI2025 by choosing “Human-Centred AI” from the drop-down menu.
SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS
Research papers are submitted with the same format and general instructions as for the main conference ( https://2025.ijcai.org/ ); there will be no rebuttal phase. The following are the other key submission considerations:
- Multiple Submissions:
Each author is limited to authorship in exactly one submission as part of the HAI special track; submissions not meeting this requirement will be disqualified. The list and ordering of authors registered at the paper submission deadline is final.
- Submission Details:
The paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically through paper submission site by applicable deadline for the special track.
- HAI Track Motivation Statement:
During the submission, authors will be required to include a brief (text-only) motivation statement describing why their work is fitting for the HAI special track (e.g., as opposed to the general IJCAI 2025 technical track) and the manner in which the authors believe their work addresses the themes and methodological focus of the HAI track. Please consult the submission system in good time to time learn about this requrement and get an overal sense of the information required. In this context, authors will also be required to explicitly provide information about the inter/multidisciplinary nature of their research (if applicable), concretely describing the nature of the scientific collaboration being reported as well as the scientific background of the contributing authors themselves.
- Paper Length and Formatting:
Papers must be no longer than 9 pages in total: 7 pages for the body of the paper and 2 pages for references. Papers not conforming to this requirement will be desk-rejected. The formatting is to made as per the templates available for IJCAI 2025, and all submissions should only be made as PDF documents. Ensure to remove any identifiying meta-information (such as author names etc) from the uploaded PDF documents.
- Parallel Submission:
Double / parallel submission to the general/main track IJCAI track, to other special tracks, or to other conferences or journals is strictly forbidden at any stage during the entire review process. Papers not meeting this requirement will be immediately excluded from further consideraction.
- Registered Email ID:
Each author much have a valid, registered email ID within the conference management. The track chairs reserve the right to disqualify papers where authors do not have a registered email ID, or if contributing authors use different emails for their diverse roles in IJCAI 2025. Contributing authors who are also involved in the review process at IJCAI 20205, and more broadly all individuals involved in IJCAI 2025, are required to also adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at:
- Supplementary Material:
If applicable, supplementary material (e.g. data, source code, resubmission information) should be submitted by the supplementary submission deadline. Deadline extensions for submission of such material are not possible, and reviewers will be advised to not utilise external links etc to access such material. Please be judicious in your submission of the supplementary material: the supplementary is not a place to write an extended paper / additional results, or to have an elaboration of some aspects of your main paper.
- Resubmission Information:
Previously rejected paper resubmissions are welcome, but authors are required to provide detailed resubmission information, as described below in the section on Resubmission Information. Failure to declare a resubmission, or to submit relevant information will lead to automatic disqualfication.
- Anonymity and Author Information:
The PDF of the paper and other supporting documents (meant for peer review) must be anonymous, and papers and authors are expected to satisfy the highest scientific standards as per the general rules of submission, conflict of interest, and overall ethical conduct applicable to IJCAI 2025. Review is double blind, but all authors must provide author information as part of the submission system (see the point above about Valid Email ID).
RESUBMISSION INFORMATION: Authors must declare whether their paper has been previously rejected from another peer-reviewed conference in the past (e.g., mere changes of title and minor content editing or re-working in relation to a previously rejected paper would not qualify as a new paper). Authors are requested to upload the latest rejected version together with the original reviewer’s comments; a cover letter responding to the reviews is encouraged. To avoid bias, the resubmission information will only be made available to reviewers of the special track after they submit their reviews. The program committee reserves the right to reject papers that fail to report resubmission information. Please note that reviewers will be encouraged to check whether the resubmission addresses the key issues pointed out in the reviews of the previous version (e.g., incorrect attribution of results, etc.) and to reject submissions that fail to do so. IJCAI chairs reserve the right to consult previously involved program chairs of the conference where the paper was previously rejected.
PUBLICATION POLICY
The following publication policy / conditions of publication are applicable for all papers in the special track on Human-Centred AI:
- Publication in IJCAI 2025 Proceedings.
All accepted papers will be published as part of the main IJCAI 2025 proceedings; all special track papers have the same publication status like other accepted contributions in the technical track.
- Participation in the conference.
At least one author of each accepted paper must participate in the conference at Montreal and present the work. We are looking forward to the community meeting in person. Authors who possess evidence indicating their inability to obtain visas for Canada may submit a request to pcchair@2025.ijcai.org to participate in the satellite event in Guangzhou. Papers not presented in person, whether at the main conference in Montreal or the satellite event in Guangzhou, will be excluded from the proceedings unless one of the authors provides notification of exceptional circumstances to IJCAI via pcchair@2025.ijcai.org. Any such exceptional circumstances must receive prior approval from IJCAI.
- IJCAI 2025 Policy.
Other general IJCAI 2025 considerations such as on Ethics Policy and Ethics Statement, and policy on use of LLMs in the paper writing process remains similarly applicable to this special track as well (please consult the IJCAI 2025 CFP for information on these aspects).
TRACK CHAIR
Örebro University, Sweden., CoDesign Lab EU
Enquiries: hai@2025.ijcai.org
(Please direct all special track related queries to the special track email listed above)