Authors: S Sabouri, Z Saghi, R Huang, S Maladi, E Eufracio, S Gulwani, S Chattopadhyay Venue: ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) 2027 (accepted October 2026)
Summary
How users audit and retain control over AI agents acting inside spreadsheets. The paper introduces Pista, a spreadsheet AI agent that decomposes execution into auditable, controllable actions. A formative study (N = 8) and a within-subjects evaluation (N = 16) found that active participation improved users’ task comprehension, their perception of the agent, and their sense of ownership over the output. First-author work; co-authored with Sumit Gulwani, connecting to the Microsoft PROSE internship.
The work was covered by USC Viterbi News in October 2026.
Links
Related
Microsoft PROSE — Applied Scientist Intern — Sumit Gulwani co-authorship, summer 2026. Thread: Human-AI Interaction in Knowledge Work — the research thread; this study takes the oversight question to users who do not write code. Sumit Gulwani — co-author.