Episode 77: Humanized agents, deceptive patterns, and honest design (feat. Caleb Sponheim)

I recently spoke at a conference in Italy, and one talk stuck with me: Caleb Sponheim from Nielsen Norman Group arguing that we have to stop designing AI agents that fool humans. It's a topic close to my heart, so I invited him on for a longer-than-usual, wonderfully opinionated conversation. Caleb comes at it from research, I come at it from actively building agentic features, and the two angles make for a really good hour.

Learning outcomes:

• What a neuroscience background reveals about how (and how little) we understand LLMs
• The risks of presenting an AI system as a person, implicitly or explicitly
• Whether natural language is really the future interface, or sometimes just a command line in disguise
• How much design should sit between the model and the user, framed through jobs-to-be-done
• Why "you are not your user" is the cardinal sin lurking in AI design, plus the sycophancy trap
• Deceptive patterns, humanized agents, and honest design as a deliberate choice
• Why the line between design, engineering, product, and research is blurring, and why that's an opportunity

Connect with Caleb Sponheim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebsponheim/ // https://www.nngroup.com/people/caleb-sponheim/
Connect with the host, Nicole Michaelis: nicoletells.com // Contentrookiepod.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoletells/ [email protected]