Four CHI ’26 papers I wish I wrote

In the very first paper session at CHI 2026, I found myself thinking, “I wish I wrote this paper!” And then I found myself thinking that a few times more. Since I’m on the hunt for new research questions, it seems worth digging into why I had these reactions. I’ll do so here. For each paper, I’ll address the following questions: What is the paper about? Why do I wish I wrote it? Could I, in fact, have written it? What next steps does the paper inspire? Monday, April 13, 11:51 am Liu, Alicia T. H., Mina Lee, and Xuechunzi Bai. 2026. “Writing with AI Can Reduce Gender Bias in Hiring Evaluations.” Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York, NY, USA), CHI ’26, April 13, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791136. What is the paper about? The authors contribute a large-N, between-subjects experiment in which participants evaluate résumés from “male” and “female” job applicants (“John” and “Jennifer”). Participants compose their evaluations…