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College of Information and Communications

Emergent Information Technology Lab

The CIC Emergent Information Technology Lab investigates how humans experience, connect to, and make meaning from AI-powered emerging technologies in embodied and immersive communication contexts.

Drawing on quantitative, biometric, qualitative, and computational methods, we explore human-technology interactions across three research hubs: Robotics, Immersive Experiences, and AI/AGI. Grounded in social science theories, our work seeks to understand how communication practices are shaping and shaped by the evolution of artificial intelligence, with ethical implications central to our scholarly inquiry.

 

Robotics Hub

The Robotics Hub studies how people interact with and form relationships with embodied AI, from desktop robots to humanoids and robotic dogs. Using quantitative, biometric, qualitative, and computational methods, we examine how robot forms shape interaction, what drives attachment to physical AI, and how human-robot relationships reshape communication, connection and social life.

Meet Fan Yang, lab director
a robot named booster wearing a hat

 

AI & AGI Hub

Research in the AI and AGI Lab spans from how human biology responds to AI technology to how this technology affects learning and cognition. Our experiments use AI as a mirror to understand the human mind. Partnered with Interpares, we are networked with +50 universities across six continents. Informed by global research, we aim to serve our local communities. Hub director Alamir Novin, Ph.D., says that the lab explores how AI impacts the way humans frame problems and evaluate choices.

Meet Alamir Novin
Alamir Novin

 

Immersive Experiences Hub

The Immersive Experiences Hub is an interdisciplinary research space for designing and studying immersive and emerging technologies. By bringing together expertise in communication and library and information science, the hub explores how technologies such as virtual and augmented reality can support education, professional training, health and science communication, and community engagement.

Trauma Support for Librarians
Rachel Williams wearing a VR headset

 

AI systems are here to stay. You can love them or hate them, but you cannot avoid them. So, let’s study them.

Fan Yang, CIC Emergent Information Technologies Lab Director
Fan Yang headshot

 

 

College of Information and Communications

My CIC
College of Information and Communications
800 Sumter St.
Columbia, SC 29208

803-777-6361