Michal Kosinski is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior at
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, a computational psychologist, and a psychometrician. He studies the psychological processes in Large Language Models (LLMs), as well as
AI and
big data
Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...
to model and predict human behavior.
He has co-authored the textbook Modern Psychometrics and published over 90 peer-reviewed papers in journals including Nature Computational Science,
Scientific Reports
''Scientific Reports'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific mega journal published by Nature Portfolio, covering all areas of the natural sciences. The journal was established in 2011. The journal states that their aim is to assess solely ...
,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...
,
Psychological Science
''Psychological Science'', the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is a monthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by SAGE Publications. The journal publishes research articles, short reports, and research repor ...
,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of social and personality psychology. The edi ...
, and
Machine Learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
, that have been cited over 21,000 times according to Google Scholar.
He is among the top 1% of Highly Cited Researchers according to
Clarivate
Clarivate Plc is a British-American Public company, publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription business model, subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business intelligenc ...
. His research inspired a cover of
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
, a 2014
theatre play "Privacy", multiple
TED talks
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...
, a video game, and was discussed in thousands of books, press articles, podcasts, and documentaries. Kosinski was behind the first press article warning against Cambridge Analytica published in The Guardian. His research exposed the privacy risks that they have exploited and measured the efficiency of their methods.
Kosinski appeared in the film ''
Do You Trust This Computer'' alongside
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...
and
Ray Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...
.
Education
Kosinski holds a doctorate in psychology from the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
and master's degrees in psychometrics and in social psychology. He used to work as a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford's Computer Science Department, as the deputy director of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre before that, and as a researcher at
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
(Machine Learning Group).
Research
In 2013, Michal Kosinski and David Stillwell published a paper entitled "''Private Traits and Attributes Are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behavior''". Kosinski and his co-authors claimed that by studying someone's Facebook Likes, one could figure out personal traits and sensitive attributes they may not want to share, from sexual and political orientation to mental health. "Individual traits and attributes can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy based on records of users' Likes," they wrote.
Kosinski and Stillwell would improve their prediction methods and publish a paper that claimed that using Facebook Likes alone, a researcher could know someone better than their close friends or life partner. In 2012, Facebook had actually patented a method doing precisely what Kosinski and Stillwell did, "''Determining user personality characteristics from social networking system communications and characteristics''".
Two weeks after Kosinski and Stillwell's paper was published, Facebook changed the default settings on Likes so that only friends could see them (until then, they were by default visible to anyone on the internet) unless people chose to share more widely. The exception was for Facebook itself, which saw everyone's Likes and could keep using them for targeting, ranking, selecting versions of products, and various other purposes.
In 2017, Kosinski co-published a paper showing that modern
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
can predict someone's sexual orientation based on facial images. The research was conducted on over 130,000 pictures and used existing facial recognition systems and AI algorithm. Their AI could predict the sexual orientation of gay men 81% of the time, while a human would be right 61% of the time.
Controversies
His research on facial recognition systems raised controversy although Kosinski and his co-author claimed they conducted it as a demonstration of the power of machine vision, to warn policy makers and to raise the alarm around the inevitable erosion of privacy.
While at Cambridge University, Kosinski was directly engaged in negotiations with
Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica Ltd. (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intell ...
to work for the company on micro-targeting in elections. The negotiations broke down - per The Guardian over Kosinski's demands for $500,000 in fees from Cambridge Analytica. Kosinski's Cambridge University Department colleague
Aleksandr Kogan decided to work for Cambridge Analytica to replicate Kosinski's & Stillwell's research, which upset them and their university department. It was after the negotiations breakdown and Kogan's professional engagement with CA, that Kosinski decided to write and warn against Cambridge Analytica. Kosinski claims he 'had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica'.
See also
*
Ethics of artificial intelligence
The ethics of artificial intelligence covers a broad range of topics within AI that are considered to have particular ethical stakes. This includes algorithmic biases, Fairness (machine learning), fairness, automated decision-making, accountabili ...
*
AI takeover
An AI takeover is an imagined scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as the dominant form of intelligence on Earth and computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species, which relies o ...
References
External links
* Michal Kosinski
''With big data comes big responsibility'' „Financial Times", 2013
* Michal Kosinski's websit
Michal Kosinski, PhD - Curriculum Vitae* The End of Privacy
The End of Privacy , Michal Kosinski , Talks at Google
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kosinski, Michal
Living people
1982 births