Communication at the Center of the AI Revolution: Engineering our Experimental AI Futures

On Friday, February 28, 2025, a UC Davis-wide collaboration hosted the successful daylong Conference "Engineering our Experimental AI Futures," which drew together a gathering of over 65 scholars spanning from the Humanities, over the Social Sciences, to Engineering. Throughout the event, attendees witnessed 18 distinctive presentations representing the research of 15 diverse UC Davis programs. UC Davis Communication emerged as the most prominent discipline present, constituting nearly 30% of the participants and contributing over one-third of the presentations. 

The presentations notably featured an overwhelming majority of female computational researchers (88%), with five female PhD students presenting their work, signaling a meaningful transformation in technology and AI research landscapes that merits recognition and celebration. PhD Candidate in Communication, Allyson Snyder, who presented co-authored work with three female undergraduate researchers, concluded: "As young women thinking about their future careers, my students have been curious about academia but unsure of what this career looks like for women specifically. In reflecting on the conference, my students shared that they were motivated to attend future academic conferences, and they were excited to meet other women researching similar topics."

The conference was organized and hosted by UC Davis' Designated Emphasis in Computational Social Science, spearheded by the organizational lead of Communication Professors Martin Hilbert and Seth Frey, and it was co-sponsored by the newly founded UC Davis Center for AI and Experimental Futures (CAIEF) and the UC Davis AI Center in Engineering, which offered $1,000 in prize awards for the best AI research. 

The quality of the AI research presented at the conference was so high that 6 projects were recognized, three for Best Research and another three for the most Innovative Research ideas for high potential impact. A clear pattern emerged with awards honoring research that studies Large Language Models (LLMs) as subjects of study, and innovative proposals that embrace AI for social impacts, including Health, Education, and Wellness.

Award winner and 2nd year Communication PhD student Rachael Kee reflected that the conference "fostered a unique opportunity for networking and collaboration for graduate students which is otherwise difficult to find. I've attended this escape for two years now, and I highly encourage any interested scholars to take up this invaluable, local opportunity to catapult their work quality and name in the field." Award winner and Communication PhD candidate Emily McKinley sums up the event by concluding: "At a time when generative AI is rapidly reshaping communication research, I left inspired by the diverse network of researchers and grateful for the insightful feedback that will help refine my own work."

Best Research Awards:

Emily McKinley (PhD student, UCD CMN), Abdulaziz Alhumaidy, Jingwen Zhang: Using LLMs to Synthesize Human Responses in Persuasive Context

Jennifer M. Krebsbach (PhD student, UCD Sociology): Analyzing Gendered Job Description Narrative Outputs by LLMs

Arezoo Ghasemzadeh, Arnav Akula, Sruthy Sabesan, Pearl Vishen (all UCD Undergraduate AI Student Collective), Martin Hilbert: Is Intimacy the New Attention? Audit of LLMs Intimacy

Best Innovation Awards:

Allyson L. Snyder (PhD student, UCD CMN), Millie Fong, Ana Cervantes, Katherine Ong: Too Scared to Talk to Peers, Too Efficient to Meaningfully Engage with a Chatbot: AI for Math Tutoring

Emily Thatcher (PhD student, UCD Nursing Science & Healthcare Leadership): Drone vs. EMS Response Times for Naloxone Delivery in Rural Settings

Rachael Kee (PhD student, UCD CMN): A New Tool for Sleep Science