Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into Building Automation Systems (BAS) to enhance energy efficiency and occupant comfort. Yet, rather than functioning as neutral optimization tools, AI in BAS operates within fragile infrastructures, limited resources, and institutional politics. We present a qualitative study of 23 interviews with energy professionals, AI researchers, and student representatives at the University of Toronto, an institution recognized for its sustainability leadership. Participants expressed ambivalence: AI was valued for forecasting and optimization, yet concerns arose around legitimacy, labor demands, and environmental paradoxes. Fairness in occupant comfort was highlighted, not as an inherent property of models but as a situated practice shaped by infrastructural governance negotiated across roles and inequities. Communication also emerged as a form of occupant agency, where human, machine, and AI-mediated dialogue makes automated decisions legible and contestable. These findings reframe AI in BAS as socio-technical infrastructure and inform our design recommendations for transparent, participatory, and just systems.

This study examined how different reading modes-human reader, reading robot, and reading pen-impact young children's engagement and comprehension. By analyzing physiological measures such as Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) alongside comprehension performance, we aimed to assess the effectiveness of each mode and explore the potential of robots as educational tools. Positioned between the interactive human reader and the passive reading pen, the reading robot not only sustained engagement for the longest duration but also achieved the highest comprehension scores. The robot effectively balanced emotional arousal and stress levels, facilitating enhanced cognitive processing and information retention. Additionally, a positive correlation was found between family technology use and both engagement and comprehension with the robot. These findings suggest that interactive technology can enhance early childhood learning by bridging the gap between human interaction and traditional learning tools.

In several countries, social robots are increasingly accessible within homes, particularly in those with pre-school-aged children. However, research on social robots has mostly been conducted in laboratory or classroom settings, and their long-term use has received little attention. Additionally, while there is a growing body of literature on CRI in a variety of domains such as education and health, less is known about the interactions between children and social robots in home settings during daily activities. Conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, this article describes a longitudinal mixed-method study that examines children's interactions with their home reading companion robot - Luka. Focusing on parental perspectives, we examined how children interact with robots over time and revealed that a social robot with reading as its primary function has the potential to both attract parental buyers and engage children in long-term use of the robot's diverse features. We offer recommendations for social robot designers and product developers targeting younger users.

Using Luhmann's communication framework, we examine the interaction implications for kindergarten to Grade 2 students using mathematics applications on four types of tablet computers. Research questions included what content is communicated between the child and the tablet computer and how engaged are children in the interaction. We found that mathematics applications developers have focused on creating applications for the practice of a priori knowledge, rather than on creating instructional applications. Results show preliminary evidence that child‐tablet communication is generally successful, but this success comes at the cost of richer, multimodal interactions. Tablet computer application developers are being cautious in offering a variety of options for children to interact with the devices, and we suggest that there is scope for a broadening of communicative interaction modes.