“Talking to Machines” is a project that aims to leverage artificial intelligence in the design and implementation of experiments. The project leads are Sonja Vogt at HEC University of Lausanne and Ray Duch at Nuffield College University of Oxford. Our primary funding is the Swiss National Science Foundation (#100018M-215519).
We are building a team of scientists to work with us on this initiative – please check out the job postings!
We are building a team of scientists to work with us on this initiative – please check out the job postings!
Project
“Talking to Machines” is a project that aims to leverage artificial intelligence in the design and implementation of experiments. The project leads are Sonja Vogt at HEC University of Lausanne and Ray Duch at Nuffield College University of Oxford. Our primary funding is from the Swiss National Science Foundation (#100018M-215519).
An important challenge facing policy makers is the effective communication of policy-related information to the average citizen. Our focus is on the information content of video communications. People differ in many ways that are relevant when it comes to behavioral responses to the information content of videos. Any intervention – nudges, edutainment, information campaigns, or legislative changes – has heterogeneous effects among the targeted population. The Talking to Machines project uses recent methodological advances to create a platform for designing experiments with information treatment arms that consist of video narratives. How do we know what information should be incorporated into a particular treatment and how should the information be framed and delivered? Moreover, how can we address heterogeneous attitudes and needs when developing communication campaigns for diverse societies? In this project, we tackle both challenges, namely optimal design of information treatment arms that are sensitive to heterogeneous treatment effects.
Our goal is to incorporate intelligent technologies in the design of policies informing average citizens about critical behaviors related to health, saving, or education. We combine narrative information with intelligent technologies to develop effective video interventions for heterogeneous populations. There have been significant advances in computational social science that provide the tools for optimizing the design of digital content and the development of information interventions. Important elements of the project include automating the conversations with subjects who participate in these experiments; programming ChatBots to facilitate these conversations; generating large corpuses of text and voice data; LLM; machine learning data analytics; and machine-enhanced design of video treatments.
We are committed to evidence-based policies and engage with national, and international governmental agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of current policies, as well as design new programs and tools with the potential to ultimately affect the lives of millions of individuals. We are an international collaboration with a talented global team of faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students. The project is a unique combination of both academic and industry researchers working in very diverse institutional contexts throughout the world. Research results from these studies have been published widely in leading social science peer-reviewed publications.
Team
Ray Duch
Project Lead
Ray Duch
Raymond Duch is the co-founder and Director of the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) at Nuffield College University of Oxford. He established and directed similar CESS centers in Chile, China, and India. He is also co-Director of the Candour Project that assembles a global team of research scholars with expertise in behavioral economics and data analytics addressing challenging health policy issues. His research focuses on the application of experimental methods to understanding individual decision making related to politics, finance, health, and economics. His publications have appeared in leading social science journals including, American Political Science Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, American Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, Applied Economics, Journal of Politics, and Nature Medicine. Ray Duch has held visiting appointments at IAST-Toulouse School of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business, WZB-Berlin, Université de Montréal, and Pompeo- Fabra University , Barcelona. His research is funded by leading social science funding agencies including the NSF, ESRC, FONDECYT, and SSHRC. He frequently advises governments, international organizations, law firms and corporations.
Sonja Vogt
Project Lead
Sonja Vogt
Sonja is an associate professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne. She uses lab and field experiments to examine the social and psychological mechanisms practitioners can use to tackle societal and environmental challenges related to public health, education, climate change, and land degradation. Much of her research is in collaboration with UN agencies and local NGOs in Sudan, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, and Armenia.
Sonja is affiliated with Nuffield College and the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences at the University of Oxford, as well as the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern.
Piotr Kotlarz
Data Scientist
Piotr Kotlarz
Piotr is a post-doctoral researcher in Data Science, working with Professor Ray Duch on the Oxford REAL Demand Center, CANDOUR and IPA research projects.
Piotr holds a PhD degree with distinction in Business Economics from the University of Liechtenstein and he received his Master’s degree in Quantitative Finance and Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
He previously worked at the European Central Bank, Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Vienna University of Economics and Business.
His research interests cover Econometrics, Statistics, Machine Learning, Experimental Methods and Political Science.
Melanie Sawers
Administration Manager
Piotr Blaszczyk
Dr Blaszczyk is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. He is a computer scientist with experience in academia and years of leadership positions in the technology sector. His past research involved applying modelling and machine learning methods in the context of drivers’ behaviour in urban conditions for the purpose of microscale traffic simulation.
Since 2020 he has been one of the key collaborators on the UKRI-funded OxCOVID19 Project. He currently works on the Geographies of Digital Divide project funded by John Fell Fund.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland, and a M.Eng. in Computer Science from the Cracow University of Technology, Poland.
We are building a team of scientists to work with us on this initiative
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