Events & Workshops

Speaker #1: Stefano Puntoni -> Consumer AI experiences

“Not long ago, artificial intelligence (AI) was the stuff of science fiction. Now it is changing how we shop, eat, work, play, and even date. Consider the diversity of interactions consumers might have with AI throughout the day, from Amazon’s recommender system to Apple’s virtual personal assistant Siri, Tesla’s self-driving features, Fitbit’s fitness tracker, Alibaba’s Tmall Genie smart speaker, Google Photo’s editing suggestions, Spotify’s music playlists, and so on. In this session, Prof. Puntoni will introduce sociological and psychological insights to explain how consumers understand AI and a framework to help companies design positive consumer AI experiences.”

Here is his paper.

Speaker #2: Francesco Balocco -> Digital advertising

Can we get a Bot Addicted?

Reverse-Engineering the Social Dilemma

Loose data policies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the explosive mix of the century. But how does it all work under the hood? In this lecture, we will open the black box by using two AIs and pitching them against each other. On one side, a simulated consumer, with their own preferences and worldview who interacts with an online platform. On the other side, a reinforcement-learning powered content platform, whose objective is to keep the consumer engaged to generate more ad revenue. Through a series of experiments, we’ll look into rabbit holes, echo chambers, and try to steer the political affiliation of our simulated consumer. We will try to understand how machine learning agents color our worldview, and discuss of what we can (still) do about it.

Past Events & Workshops

Click on the events above for more information.