The vision and mission of research under the banner of Ubiquitous Computing has increasingly moved from focusing on the realm of “artifacts” to the realm of “environments”. We seek to scrutinize this very transition, and raise questions that relate to the specific attributes of built environments that set them inherently apart from artifacts. How does an interactive environment differ from an interactive artifact, a collection of artifacts, or an integrated suite of artifacts? Consequently, we ask what are the new user experience dimensions that HCI researchers should merge into their considerations, for example, by supplementing usability and engagement with occupants' comfort across multiple dimensions, and shifting attention from (often) short lifespan and discretionary to durable and immersive experiences? In this contribution, we bring arguments from the literature of environmental psychology and architecture that highlight the points of divergence between artifacts and architecture, and then translate them into challenges for Human-Computer Interaction, and particularly for the emerging domain of Human-Building Interaction.

The Association for the Advancement of Artifcial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2018 Spring Symposium Series, held March 26-28, 2018, on the campus of Stanford University. The seven symposia held were AI and Society: Ethics, Safety, and Trustworthiness in Intelligent Agents; Artifcial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything; Beyond Machine Intelligence: Understanding Cognitive Bias and Humanity for WellBeing AI; Data-Effcient Reinforcement Learning; The Design of the User Experience for Artifcial Intelligence (the UX of AI); Integrated Representation, Reasoning, Learning, and Execution for Goal-Directed Autonomy; Learning, Inference, and Control of Multiagent Systems. This report, compiled from organizers of the symposia, summarizes the research of the symposia that took place.