Zana Buçinca

Pro-worker AI doesn’t just happen. Companies need to act | MIT Sloan As AI capabilities advance, the window for shaping whether the technology augments or replaces workers is narrowing. Decision makers need to step up, MIT researchers say.

An article from MIT Sloan features insights from @zbucinca.bsky.social, @emollick.bsky.social & @dacemoglumit.bsky.social at our launch event, including:

🔎 Defining pro-worker AI
🚫 3 barriers to its implementation
💡 Design & strategy principles needed to build it

mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-t...

If Bilbo had Chat GPT

How to stop AI from killing your critical thinking Chatbots might help you get work done faster — but at what cost? When we outsource our reasoning to artificial intelligence, we reduce ourselves to "middle managers for our own thoughts," says AI and ...

Microsoft senior researcher, Advait Sarkar, recently presented at TED AI Vienna, where he spoke about AI’s role in elevating human thought.

Aaaaarrrggh

What is "pro-worker AI," and how can we actually achieve it?

A panel discussion at the upcoming launch of the Stone Center will feature insights from @meredithmeredith.bsky.social, @emollick.bsky.social & @zbucinca.bsky.social.

Register: shapingwork.mit.edu/events/stone...

Machine Learning / AI Internships - Jobs - Careers at Apple Apply for a Machine Learning / AI Internships job at Apple. Read about the role and find out if it’s right for you.

Our Responsible AI team at Apple is looking for spring/summer 2026 PhD research interns! Please apply at jobs.apple.com/en-us/detail... and email rai-internship@group.apple.com. Do not send extra info (e.g., CV), just drop us a line so we can find your application in the central pool!

Honored to be part of the panel on Pro-Worker AI at the launch event of MIT Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. Looking forward to it!

📅 Join us on 11/3 as we officially launch the Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work! The half-day event will feature a series of discussions at the intersection of technology, the future of work, and inequality. See the agenda and register: shapingwork.mit.edu/events/stone...

AI Eroded Doctors’ Ability to Spot Cancer Within Months in Study Artificial intelligence, touted for its potential to transform medicine, led to some doctors losing skills after just a few months in a new study.

“The AI in the study probably prompted doctors to become over-reliant on its recommendations, ‘leading to clinicians becoming less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance,’ the scientists said in the paper.”

We're recruiting a new tenure-track faculty member to MIT Sloan!
apply.interfolio.com/170116

We're looking for someone doing research in quantitative marketing, broadly considered. Faculty in our group work on economics of privacy, mathematical psych, networks, and applications of ML & AI.

Congratulations, Maria!!

I second this. Many people from my generation in Kosovo can understand/speak Spanish because we grew up with subtitled Latin American telenovelas. (That was the only type of TV that Kosovo could afford right after the war.)

The sycophantic tone of ChatGPT always sounded familiar, and then I recognized where I'd heard it before: author response letters to reviewer comments.

"You're exactly right, that's a great point!"

"Thank you so much for this insight!"

Also how it always agrees even when it contradicts itself.

The Surprising Potential of Health and Well-Being Committees | MIT Sloan MIT Sloan Professor Erin L. Kelly, who is Co-Director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER), found in a recent multiyear study in e-commerce warehouses that establishing Health ...

You might not think that forming a committee where frontline workers can share work-related health & well-being concerns would have all that much effect on a workplace.
But it can. That’s what @elkelly.bsky.social @mitiwer.bsky.social & colleagues found in a recent study: tinyurl.com/y4pej88v

Wohoo! Congratulations to you as well, Prof. Das Swain! Thanks for co-riding the emotional roller coaster of the job market.

Thank you, Maria!!

I really dislike this sentiment re: AI impacts on education: If an assignment can be completed by AI then it is clearly just busy work; educators need to create better assignments.

Absolutely not true. Just because AI can do something too doesn't mean that doing it doesn't have pedagogical value.

Thank you so much, Michael!!

Thank you, Serena!! Can’t wait for all the events and collaborations we will cook together!

Yayyy!!!! Thank you, Arvind!! Over the moon to be joining this incredible community!

The academic job market has many ups and downs. I am grateful to my friends and the community who spared their time to share feedback on my statements. Special thanks to: @reniebird.bsky.social, @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social, and Liz Bondi-Kelly.

For every achievement, I am forever indebted to my advisor ‪@kgajos.bsky.social for his brilliance, kindness, patience and the profound impact he’s had on me as a researcher and as a human being.

I also thank Finale, Elena, Jenn, Saleema and too many mentors to list here for shaping me as a scholar

Thrilled to share that I’ve successfully defended my PhD dissertation and I will be joining MIT as an Assistant Professor starting Fall 2026, with a shared appointment between Sloan and EECS!

I will be recruiting 1-2 PhD students this upcoming cycle. Consider applying to MIT EECS!

Drawing of a person looking at a screen, which contains an example of an AI generated decision recommendation and a contrastive explanation: "The AI suggests Antibiotic A instead of Antibiotic B because: Although both antibiotics can treat bacterial infections, recent lab tests showed that the bacteria found in this patient are resistant to Antibiotic B."

@zbucinca.bsky.social's new paper shows that people who receive AI decision recommendations with contrastive explanations (pick A instead of B because...) grow their skills. This important because people do not learn when AI provides conventional explanations.
iis.seas.harvard.edu/papers/bucin...

I will be presenting this work today at 2:34 JST, room 402 #CHI2025.

As concerns about deskilling in AI-supported tasks grow, our research demonstrates that integrating human reasoning into AI design can promote human skill development.

We introduce human-centered contrastive explanations which explain the difference between AI’s choice and a predicted, likely human choice about the same task and demonstrate that such explanations significantly enhance users’ learning compared to unilateral explanations without sacrificing accuracy

We argue this is partly because people intuitively seek contrastive explanations, which clarify the difference between the AI’s decision and their own reasoning, while most AI systems offer “unilateral” explanations that justify the AI’s decision but do not account for users’ knowledge gaps.

Screenshot of a paper on Contrasive Explanations That Anticipate Human Misconceptions Can Improve Human Decision-Making skills.

#CHI2025
As we rely on AI for decision-making support, how will our independent decision-making skills be affected? Prior work shows people’s decision-making skills often fail to improve or may even erode when they rely on AI for decision-support, even when the AI provides informative explanations.

@kjfeng.me and @rockpang.bsky.social are kicking off the panel on sociotechnical AI governance!

#CHI2025