# What is "Intelligent" in Intelligent User Interfaces? A Meta-Analysis of 25 Years of IUI

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03158 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03158/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Counterfactuals and Causability in Explainable Artificial Intelligence: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04244/) (2021)
- [ChatGPT on the Road: Leveraging Large Language Model-Powered In-vehicle Conversational Agents for Safer and More Enjoyable Driving Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08101/) (2025)
- [IMAGINE: An Integrated Model of Artificial Intelligence-Mediated Communication Effects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08658/) (2022)
- [Intelligent Interaction Techniques (IIxT) - Proposal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16295/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This reflection paper takes the 25th IUI conference milestone as an opportunity to analyse in detail the understanding of intelligence in the community: Despite the focus on intelligent UIs, it has remained elusive what exactly renders an interactive system or user interface "intelligent", also in the fields of HCI and AI at large. We follow a bottom-up approach to analyse the emergent meaning of intelligence in the IUI community: In particular, we apply text analysis to extract all occurrences of "intelligent" in all IUI proceedings. We manually review these with regard to three main questions: 1) What is deemed intelligent? 2) How (else) is it characterised? and 3) What capabilities are attributed to an intelligent entity? We discuss the community's emerging implicit perspective on characteristics of intelligence in intelligent user interfaces and conclude with ideas for stating one's own understanding of intelligence more explicitly.