An in-progress interdisciplinary research effort, Conversation Analytic (CA) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) study, is reported. A conversation analytic approach to repair and self-explication is taken that covers both human studies and artificial intelligence. The term "human" is used here in place of "linguistic." Three definitions of "repair" are given to show how artificial intelligence, discourse analysis, and conversational analysis compare. Some results are reported of empirical investigations of Finnish sign language, computer interfaces in general, and a special case of a telephone computer dialogue system. The study to date indicates that the whole concept of repair work needs to be analyzed carefully in order to sort out the subcategories. Contains 9 references. (LB)