Postdoctoral Associate / Research Scientist (Designing human-AI teams) (SS) - Generous Compensation

Project Overview

We are seeking one or more Postdoctoral Associates, Research Engineers, or Research Scientists in social sciences or related fields to join a project on “Designing human-AI teams.” The project is part of a five-year research program on "Mens, Manus and Machina—How AI Empowers People, Institutions and Cities in Singapore (M3S)."

Successful applicants for this position will have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge, interdisciplinary projects that aim to dramatically rethink how people and AI systems will work together in the future. To do this, the project seeks to build a strong scientific foundation for how AI can augment (as opposed to replace) humans.

One important goal of the project is to develop a rich taxonomy of activities that can be performed by human-AI teams. Like mapping the plants and animals on an unexplored continent, the work will involve cataloging many (a) activities and (b) possible human-computer processes for performing these activities.

To do this, we will develop knowledge bases that include (1) descriptions of many different types of activities and processes, and (2) classifications of these descriptions into taxonomies that range from very general types of activities to very specific ones.

Then, using these knowledge bases, we will develop AI tools to automatically generate promising ways of combining humans and AI systems to perform different tasks. In the long run, we believe these tools will help rapidly (a) identify use cases for new AI capabilities, (b) specify effective processes and task allocations to humans and computers in a given situation, and (c) identify innovative ways to combine people and AI to solve business and societal problems.

The T6 team is led by distinguished scholars, including Profs. Thomas Malone, Daniela Rus, and Abdullah Almaatouq from MIT; and Profs. Marcelo Ang and Bryan Low from the National University of Singapore; and will be assisted by Prof. Archan Misra from Singapore Management University.

Job Description

Successful candidates for this job will participate in one or more activities like the following:

• Developing descriptions of current or potential activities and processes based on techniques such as: interviews, surveys, field studies, ethnographic observations, and literature reviews.
• Making editorial decisions about what content to include in the knowledge base, how to present it clearly, and how to organize it in ways that are logical, comprehensive, widely understandable, intuitively appealing, and conceptually elegant.
• Using human-subject experiments and other social science methodologies (such as cluster analysis) to help improve the above activities as well as to inform and evaluate the development of software tools based on the knowledge bases being developed.
• Collaborate with the project team and other researchers to design, implement, and evaluate research projects.
• Perform other duties as needed. 
• Publish research results in top-tier conferences and journals, and disseminate research findings through presentations and other means.
• Participate in the mentorship and training of graduate and undergraduate students at MIT and in Singapore.
• Assist in grant writing, project management, and other administrative duties related to research activities.

Job Requirements

• Ph.D. in Social Science (such as Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, and Economics), Management, Organizational Behavior, Philosophy, Journalism, Computer Science (e.g., with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction), or other related fields by the start of the appointment.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• DESIRABLE:
  • Strong publication record in top-tier conferences and journals.
  • Familiarity with statistical data analysis tools and techniques.