"Oops! ChatGPT is Temporarily Unavailable!": A Diary Study on Knowledge Workers' Experiences of LLM Withdrawal

LLMs have become deeply embedded in knowledge work, raising concerns about growing dependency and the potential undermining of human skills. To investigate the pervasiveness of LLMs in work practices, we conducted a four-day diary study with frequent LLM users (N=10), observing how knowledge workers responded to a temporary withdrawal of LLMs. Our findings show how LLM withdrawal disrupted participants' workflows by identifying gaps in task execution, how self-directed work led participants to reclaim professional values, and how everyday practices revealed the extent to which LLM use had become inescapably normative. Conceptualizing LLMs as infrastructural to contemporary knowledge work, this research contributes empirical insights into the often invisible role of LLMs and proposes value-driven appropriation as an approach to supporting professional values in the current LLM-pervasive work environment.

Reimagining Personal Data: Unlocking the Potential of AI-Generated Images in Personal Data Meaning-Making

Image-generative AI provides new opportunities to transform personal data into alternative visual forms. In this paper, we illustrate the potential of AI-generated images in facilitating meaningful engagement with personal data. In a formative autobiographical design study, we explored the design and use of AI-generated images derived from personal data. Informed by this study, we designed a web-based application as a probe that represents personal data through generative images utilizing Open AI's GPT-4 model and DALL-E 3. We then conducted a 21-day diary study and interviews using the probe with 16 participants to investigate users' in-depth experiences with images generated by AI in everyday lives. Our findings reveal new qualities of experiences in users' engagement with data, highlighting how participants constructed personal meaning from their data through imagination and speculation on AI-generated images. We conclude by discussing the potential and concerns of leveraging image-generative AI for personal data meaning-making.