Job Code: 23/2023Job Offer from August 07, 2023

Humanet3 is a joint research group established by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Prof. Armin von Bogdandy), the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Prof. Josef Drexl), and the Center for Humans and Machines (CHM) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (Prof. Iyad Rahwan). It is led by Erik Tuchtfeld.

The research group analyzes and puts forward proposals of how a ‘human-centred’ digital transition, as proposed by the European Commission in its ‘European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade’, can be defined and be worked towards. Its focus will be the digital public, as space for debate and for the expression of opinion on the internet. The group investigates how current developments in the digital realm, such as the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications, affect individual rights by either limiting or by facilitating them. In addition, it also deals with possible systemic changes on an infrastructural level orientated towards an internet committed to the public interest and not merely the profit and power of private actors.

The group will be physically based in Berlin at the Center for Humans and Machines (CHM), located at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. CHM conducts interdisciplinary science to understand, anticipate, and shape major disruptions from digital media and Artificial Intelligence to the way we think, learn, work, play, cooperate, and govern. Our goal is to understand how machines are shaping human society today and how they may continue to shape it in the future. The Center is comprised of an interdisciplinary, international, and diverse group of scholars and a science support team. The center’s researchers are distributed approximately 50-50 between computational and behavioral scientists.

We are looking to hire one Ph.D. Candidate (m/f/d) in AI, Human Behavior & Policy (E 13 TVöD; 39 hours/week).

Your research will investigate the impact of emerging AI systems (e.g., chatbots built on Large Language Models) on human behavior and the implications of these empirical findings on policy. Example topics include

• the tradeoffs between transparency (e.g., disclosure of AI’s presence) and efficiency of interaction. Sample reading:
  • Ishowo-Oloko, Fatimah, Jean-François Bonnefon, Zakariyah Soroye, Jacob Crandall, Iyad Rahwan, and Talal Rahwan. “Behavioural evidence for a transparency–efficiency tradeoff in human–machine cooperation.” Nature Machine Intelligence 1, no. 11 (2019): 517-521.
• the impact of machines on human ethical behavior. Sample reading:
  • Köbis, Nils, Jean-François Bonnefon, and Iyad Rahwan. “Bad machines corrupt good morals.” Nature Human Behaviour 5, no. 6 (2021): 679-685.
• the impact of AI-mediated communication on human interaction. Sample reading:
  • von Schenk, Alicia, Victor Klockmann, Jean-François Bonnefon, Iyad Rahwan, and Nils Köbis. “Lie detection algorithms attract few users but vastly increase accusation rates.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.04277 (2022).
• the systemic consequences of constant private surveillance (tracking) in
the digital public as well as private conversations with chatbots.
• the impact of algorithmic curation of advertisements and content via conversational AI.
• the integration of values and principles into the development and application of AI tools. Sample reading:
  • Rahwan, Iyad. “Society-in-the-loop: programming the algorithmic social contract.” Ethics and information technology 20, no. 1 (2018): 5-14.

The position

• We seek to hire a predoctoral researcher to work on ambitious, high-impact research anticipating the societal and normative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• Projects will be conducted under the supervision of Prof. Iyad Rahwan at the Center for Humans and Machines, and the student will also be a member of the interdisciplinary Humanet3 research group.
• The predoctoral fellow will conduct empirical studies as large-scale online experiments, analyze data, and publish research findings in leading scientific journals.
• The position will include generous support for recruiting sizable online participant cohorts, travel to conferences and collaborators, and funds for hiring designers and developers to produce bespoke online experiments.
• The position is limited to three years.
• Starting date is October 1, 2023, or later.

Your profile

The successful applicant must have the following:

• Applicants must hold, or expect to hold by the starting date, a Master’s degree in a behavioral science field (e.g., psychology, economics, political science, anthropology) or a computational field with a strong interest in human behavior (e.g., Human-Computer Interaction, Computational Social Science).
• Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality research, evidenced by a publication record.
• Strong quantitative skills, ranging from the design and implementation of behavioral or economic experiments to conducting advanced statistical inference, including various regression models, structural estimation, etc. Preference will be for candidates with statistical maturity and an ability to identify and avoid weaknesses that threaten replication, causality, and generalization.
• Demonstrated understanding of causal inference methodologies.
• Expertise in at least one programming language for data analytics and creating meaningful tables and figures, such as R or Python.
• A commitment to following the best methodological practices in behavioral sciences, such as pre-registration of studies, sharing of well-documented computer code, version control such as Git, writing reproducible research reports, open sharing of data whenever feasible, etc.
• High proficiency in English.
• High motivation and ability to work independently and as part of an (interdisciplinary) team alongside other computational scientists and behavioral scientists. Ability to coordinate feedback from teams of senior collaborators.
• Willingness to present and communicate research in internal and external seminars and conferences.

Desirable skills include:

• Knowledge of fundamentals and/or recent literature in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
• Experience designing and conducting behavioral or economic experiments in the lab or online via platforms such as Prolific or Amazon Mechanical Turk and/or recruitment of panels.
• Experience developing and deploying interactive web applications (e.g., React, FastAPI, Docker, Kubernetes).

Our offer

• The opportunity to work on high-impact research at the internationally renowned Center for Humans and Machines.
• Working in a dynamic multidisciplinary team with colleagues from experimental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, art, science, economics, computer science, and physics.
• Strong support from our science support team and the opportunity to guide and work with research assistants.
• Support with public outreach (e.g., social media, print media, or exhibitions).
• The possibility of conducting side projects.
• Possibility to work partly from home office.

Your application

The Max Planck Society strives for gender and diversity equality. We welcome applications from all backgrounds. The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals.

To apply, please address a

• statement of research interests,
• a CV without a photo,
• a copy of relevant certificates,
• if applicable, (p)reprints of max. three publications led by the applicant,
• and a list of three referrers

to: Prof. Dr. Iyad Rahwan, MPI for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin. Please submit all documents in one file via the application portal.
Applications will be evaluated on a first-come, first-serve basis and will continue to be received until August 31, 2023, or until the position is filled.

The data protection declaration for the processing of personal data within the scope of your application.