Across the Institute, researchers are learning that AI can help them to think bigger and do more. Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics and Leadership Chair and director of Caltech's Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience, uses AI to garner insights about how people make decisions and form or break habits.
As researchers at Caltech and beyond have worked to develop artificial intelligence technologies to perform ever-more data-intensive and critical scientific inquiries, they and their colleagues have also sought to steer those technologies' ethical development, working with industry and government leaders to gauge how society's growing entanglement with AI will shape the road ahead.
An overreliance on slow as opposed to fast learning may explain why problem gamblers will persist with losing strategies well after recreational gamblers have given up.
At Caltech, Laura Taylor, a postdoctoral instructor in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, conducts data-driven research that combines satellite imagery with historical and economic analysis to point to policy solutions for fairer resource allocation and cleaner water.
Experimental economist Marina Agranov demonstrates that committees that face uncertainty about the future size of a surplus and use a unanimity voting rule may result in more efficient outcomes as compared with a majority voting rule.
Video Lightbox
Meet the Social Sciences Faculty
Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics
Jonathan N. Katz
Money is very important in politics, but all the previous studies about campaign finance were restricted to relatively large donors, leading to a skewed picture of this important political activity. Given changes in technology, smaller donors are becoming both more numerous and important."
There are other institutions that are wonderful at teaching and wonderful at research. But at Caltech, it seems to me that to be wonderful at teaching means that you teach the students what the frontier of research is—that teaching and research are not different things."
Caltech pioneered the use of mathematical models to explain political behavior, including voting and bargaining. The research I do would not be possible without these early contributions."
There are good reasons to do experiments. Applying theories in the real world before testing them, and ruining someone’s real life, seems too high a cost."
Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and History, Emeritus
Philip T. Hoffman
Caltech is the one place where you really can do interdisciplinary work, whether you are a professor or a student. You never stop learning—or advancing the frontiers of knowledge."
Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics; T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience Leadership Chair; Director, T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience
Colin F. Camerer
One of the hallmarks of Caltech's HSS division, besides scientific excellence, is that people here wander and end up working on things in very unusual combinations."
Data are powerful. Understanding human behavior with real-world data provides important insights into policy design aimed at improving consumer welfare and market efficiency."
Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology
Ralph Adolphs
Caltech's small size really fosters interdisciplinary science. I exchange ideas with people from different fields when walking between my lab and my office, and I often run late to lunch at the Athenaeum because I catch up with so many students and faculty who I run into along the way."
Here, political scientists are right next door to economists and right next door to neuroscientists. We often tackle similar problems, like collective decision making, but from very different approaches."
Experiments are starting to get incorporated into mainstream economics but are still a relatively new tool. Caltech has been a powerhouse in experimental economics from the beginning, and it's so exciting to join the tradition."