Encoding Societal Values into Social Media AIs · Call for Postdoctoral Fellows

We seek one or more postdoctoral fellows to join our project on societal values and social media algorithms.

Artificial intelligence algorithms underpin social media, influencing everything from feed ranking to moderation to disinformation classification. These algorithms maximize each user’s individual experience—as predicted through likes, retweets, and other behavioral data—which can harm societal values such as wellbeing, social capital, mitigating harm to minoritized groups, democracy, and maintaining pro-social norms. How can we encode societal values into these algorithms without sacrificing the core of what can make social media compelling and useful? Our project is developing intertwined social scientific, engineering, and policy answers to these questions. Social scientific research helps us understand the societal values at play, how the algorithms themselves influence those values, or how they might be creating feedback loops that undercut such values. Engineering research develops new participatory models for collective determination of how to embed these societal values in the social media AI (e.g., feed ranking), how to measure the impact of AI decisions on these values from sparse observable data, and how to concretely embed these (potentially conflicting) values into the AIs. Policy proposals articulate how the societal values in such algorithms ought to be decided upon, and the kinds of regulation and oversight that social media algorithms ought to have. Through this work, we hope to paint a future where social media AIs aid us in achieving our societal goals rather than undermine them. Read more details here.

This project is supported by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).

Research focus

We are seeking one or more postdoctoral fellows to contribute to this research. Postdoctoral fellows may contribute to one or more of the following threads of research:

• Qualitative and critical studies
• Quantitative data science or experimental research
• Policy
• Social computing platform design and deployment
• Artificial intelligence and AI alignment

Each postdoctoral fellow will be mentored by a pair of the main faculty investigators on the project:

• Angele Christin, Associate Professor of Communication
• Jeanne Tsai, Professor of Psychology
• Jeffrey Hancock, Professor of Communication
• Johan Ugander, Associate Professor of Management Science & Engineering
• Michael Bernstein, Associate Professor of Computer Science
• Nate Persily, Professor of Law
• Robb Willer, Professor of Sociology, Psychology, and Business
• Tatsunori Hashimoto, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Start date is negotiable, with a typical expected start date of Fall 2024.

Salary

$82,000 annually for a period of two years, or one year if desired by the applicant

Application

To apply, please complete the application form. Apply by February 20, 2024.

Postdoctoral scholars will participate in projects at all stages from design to analysis to manuscript preparation, attend a weekly all-hands project meeting, and engage in collaborations with others in the broader project. Project direction will be determined collectively by the postdoc and their mentors.

Details

Qualifications for this position include a PhD in the relevant discipline. Stanford provides many services and procedures to support professional development of its postdocs.

The job duties listed are typical examples of work performed by positions in this job classification and are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, tasks, and responsibilities. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing the general nature and scope of the job or level of responsibility. Employees may also perform other duties as assigned.

Stanford is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.