Katelyn Xiaoying Mei
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Washington
I'm a fourth-year PhD candidate in Information Science at the University of Washington. I'm fortunate to be advised by Lucy Lu Wang and Katharina Reinecke. I'm also very grateful to be mentored by Allison Koenecke and Mona Sloane . Before my PhD, I spent four amazing years at Middlebury College from which I obtained my Bachelor's of Art in Psychology and Mathematics.
My research interests derive from the intersection of psychology, humanties, and data science. Through large-scale online experiments and collection of real-world social media data, my projects focus on human cognition and decision-making in the age of generative AI, including 1) how individuals interact with AI systems in various settings, 2) how AI systems affect individuals' behaviors, and 3) psychological factors underlying our engagement with AI systems.
News
June 2025
I passed my qualifying exam and became a PhD candidate!
April 2025
New position paper on critical thinking in the era of GenAI is accepted to CHI 2025 workshop!
Paper is included in publications below.
March 2025
New article on AI hallucination published in the Conversation
Check out my latest article on AI hallucination and its implications for society.
Education
University of Washington
Ph.D. in Information Science
Advisor: Prof. Lucy Lu Wang and Prof. Katharina Reinecke
Middlebury College
B.A. in Psychology and Mathematics
Publications
ACM Workshop on Human-AI Interaction for Augmented Reasoning (CHI) 2025
Designing AI Systems that Augment Human Performed vs. Demonstrated Critical Thinking
Katelyn X. Mei, Nic Weber
Propose new definitions for evaluating the impact of GenAI on human critical thinking and systems design.
Under Submission 2025
Addressing Pitfalls in Auditing Practices of Automatic Speech Recognition Technologies: A Case Study of People with Aphasia
Katelyn X. Mei, Anna Seo Gyeong Choi, Hilke Schellmann, Mona Sloane, Allison Koenecke
Propose new practices for auditing ASR systems to better include people with speech impairments.
2025
Passing the Buck to AI: How Individuals' Decision-Making Patterns Affect Reliance on AI
Katelyn X. Mei, Rock Yuren Pang, Alex Lyford, Lucy Lu Wang, Katharina Reinecke
Examine the effect of individuals' decision-making patterns on their reliance on AI suggestions.
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) 2024
Careless Whisper: Speech-to-Text Hallucination Harms
Allison Koenecke, Anna Seo Gyeong Choi, Katelyn X. Mei, Hilke Schellmann, Mona Sloane
Hallucination in speech-to-text output in OpenAI Whisper.