fractal accountability

I think accountability or "transparency" of computer interfaces is a wonderfully important research problem, making this all the more interesting...

Fractals show machine intentions

Researchers from Switzerland and South Africa have designed a visual interface that would give autonomous machines the equivalent of body language. The interface represents a machine's internal state in a way that makes it possible for observers to interpret the machine's behavior.

You can also check out the actual research paper: "Towards genuine machine autonomy". It's scarce on pictures, but enough to get a gist. Didn't strike me as earth-shattering, but if users can effectively use it to better understand and make inferences about machine behavior, I'd call it a win. Let's see more user studies!