AI-SDM Seminar - Deb Roy

— 1:30pm

Location:
Virtual Presentation - ET - Remote Access - Zoom

Speaker:
DEB ROY , Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Director, Center for Constructive Communication
Media Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://www.media.mit.edu/people/dkroy/overview/

A Better Way to Listen at Scale

Social media platforms reward conflict and outrage, drowning out genuine conversation with noise, bots, and misinformation. Our public discourse is increasingly filled with performative rather than authentic speech, making it harder to understand what people actually think and feel – and harder still to build the trust that healthy communities and democracies require.

In 2017, after years of studying social media, we asked: How can technology help people listen to one another, understand across divides, and solve problems together? At the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, working with the nonprofit Cortico, we have developed a system of AI-powered tools and human-led practices for systematic listening that combines practices from facilitated dialogue, qualitative research, and community organizing. In our approach, AI scaffolds human voice and agency rather than replacing them.

The approach has been deployed by Cortico in partnership with over 275 organizations across the United States—including schools, cities, and local community groups. Communities use the approach to surface underheard perspectives, identify shared themes, and generate media outputs that are used to build public understanding, shape policies, and make decisions.

This talk distills what we have learned, demonstrates the approach in practice, and outlines active research in AI-assisted sensemaking and deliberation. The work addresses three linked challenges posed by rapidly advancing AI: scaling conversation without eroding trust; harnessing AI’s power while keeping control in the hands of communities; and designing tools that strengthen, rather than diminish, human agency.

—

Deb Roy is professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT where he directs the MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC). He leads research in designing human-AI systems that foster dialogue, listening, and deliberation in ways that build civic muscle. Roy is also co-founder and unpaid CEO of Cortico, a closely affiliated nonprofit collaborator of CCC that develops, operates and supports a conversation platform designed to surface underheard voices and perspectives and create scalable dialogue networks.

Previously, Roy was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (2021-22), and served as executive director of the MIT Media Lab (2019-2021), where CCC is based. Earlier, while on leave from MIT, Roy co-founded and was CEO of Bluefin Labs, a media analytics company that analyzed the interactions between television and social media at scale. Bluefin was acquired by Twitter in 2013, Twitter’s largest acquisition to date. From 2013-2017 Roy served as Twitter’s chief media scientist.

Currently Roy serves on the board of the Knight First Amendment Institute and the FRONTLINE advisory council. He previously served on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy and the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder.

Roy is the author of over 185 academic papers including a study of the spread of false news that was the cover story of Science magazine in 2018 and cited as one of the most influential academic publications of the year. His 2023 essay in The Atlantic describes his journey from studying social media to creating dialogue networks, and his 2024 Atlantic essay explores ways to tackle truth decay. Roy’s widely viewed TED talk Birth of a Word presents his pioneering research on his son’s language development that led to new ideas in media analytics.

A native of Canada, Deb was born and raised in Winnipeg and spent large parts of his childhood in Calcutta. He received his Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Waterloo and PhD in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.

REGISTER → to participate in person or remotely

For More Information:
pwerns@andrew.cmu.edu

Add event to Google
Add event to iCal