digital wellbeing teams

Abstract: People increasingly share personal goals online and invite others to forecast them. Research on the planning fallacy finds that observers predict a person's behavior less optimistically than the person does, and prediction markets aggregate such judgments, harnessing the wisdom of crowds. We study 6,150 prediction markets on Manifold in which 1,660 users asked about their own futures ("Will I ...?"), reconstruct every order and execution, and compare these self-markets with markets about external events. Self-markets resolved YES 4.4 percentage points less often than their final prices implied, whereas external markets were nearly calibrated (0.9 points); the difference was 2.2 points at the same price level and 1.9 points within creators who made both kinds of market. Absent when markets opened, the overstatement emerged within a day of trading, even where the person never traded, and peaked in the week before close. In a market's first day, observers moved external-market prices down toward the base rate, but moved self-market prices 3.6 points further toward YES, except in markets naming an outcome the person would not want, which were not overpriced. The correction came late and largely from the person, whose orders supplied 38% of the eventual movement toward the outcome in self-markets, against 9% in external markets. Because self-market prices mainly failed to separate successes from failures, a recalibration learned from earlier markets improved later forecasts by only 1.5%. Crowds believe in the futures people pose for themselves, and the information that would correct them lies with the person.

Abstract: The adoption of social companion AI (SCAI) is often framed in terms of the positive features it offers users, including its nonjudgemental nature, agreeableness, and availability. Here, we argue the appeal of these features primarily arises from the difficulties inherent in human sociality. SCAI reduces what we term relational complexity, or the demands and risks inherent in human relationships. Drawing insights from studies of human cognition, communication, and human-computer interaction, we identify six distinct sites of relational complexity that we posit are integral to understanding SCAI adoption. These include: (i) relationship formation and dissolution; (ii) achieving mutual understanding; (iii) interpersonal motives and strategic uncertainty; (iv) social partner evaluation and self-presentation; (v) social embeddedness and information flow; and (vi) reciprocity and relationship maintenance. By attenuating relational complexity, SCAI offers users some of the experiences associated with companionship while reducing the demands intrinsic to obtaining such experiences from another person. However, the lower interpersonal risk and diminished cognitive load that attracts users to SCAI may contribute to myriad negative impacts, including relationship displacement, social demotivation, social deskilling, and risks to privacy. The concept of relational complexity thus provides a framework for studying both the appeal of artificial companionship and its implications for human wellbeing.

Abstract: Pet bereavement often receives little social recognition. Generative AI can give a continuing bond a responsive voice, but a comforting reply may also claim authority to forgive or request attention. We investigate how a memorial can support connection without turning remembrance into obligation. Through Research through Design, we developed Afterglow, a mobile world connecting private remembrance, human witnessing, and symbolic Pet messages. A formative survey (N=57) informed the initial design, followed by six online roundtable walkthroughs with 20 unique participants across two prototype iterations. Our interpretive analysis develops tensions between returnable connection and emotional obligation, recognizable likeness and ontological clarity, and protective intervention and surveillant authority. We contribute Legible Restraint, a cross-layer requirement that limits on relational authority survive changes in speaker, generation context, trigger logic, data use, and participation. Its temporal consequence, Designing for Goodbye, keeps remembrance available without making continued use a condition of care.