Nicholas Confessore, a Politics correspondent for The New York Times, joins Michal Kosinski, a Stanford psychometrics expert, to dive into the murky world of data-driven politics. They discuss the controversial strategies of Cambridge Analytica in the Trump campaign, questioning if personality profiling really swayed voters or if charisma was the true trump card. The conversation raises ethical dilemmas surrounding the manipulation of voter behavior and the fine line between effective persuasion and unethical influence in both politics and marketing.

Michal Kosinski, an Associate Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, discusses the alarming effects of social media on democracy. He highlights how platforms like Facebook inadvertently empowered populist candidates, bypassing traditional media. Kosinski also reflects on his controversial research that predicts personal traits from social media data. While he sees potential in AI to improve lives, he warns of the long-term risks associated with its unchecked advancement and emphasizes the need for effective privacy protections in our digital landscape.

Guest Michal Kosinski, Professor of Psychology, discusses the Cambridge Analytica scandal, using Facebook likes to predict traits, the concept of privacy today, challenges and benefits of personal data collection, and the intersection of privacy, AI, and creativity.

Dr. Michal Kosinski, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University, discusses his research on theory of mind in Large Language Models (LLMs) and reasoning biases. They explore emergent properties in LLMs, the importance of theory of mind in language, testing theory of mind in LLMs, cognitive bias in solving tasks, reasoning vs intuition in language models, and the use of theory of mind tasks in LLMs. They also touch on artificial networks rediscovering human mechanisms and the guest's scientific journey.

Dr. Michal Kosinski, Associate Professor at Stanford University, discusses big data and AI. Topics include: uncovering personality traits through social media, consequences of digital footprints, privacy on social media platforms, linking facial appearance to psychodemographic traits, and exploiting data for marketing.