Events

TaD Seminar: The World Works

Speaker: Kawin Ethayarajh (University of Chicago - Booth)

Location: 60 Fifth Avenue, Room 7th Floor Open Space
Videoconference link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/98954373715

Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Abstract: As AI agents make decisions in the same environments as humans, the environments themselves will adapt to them. This creates a feedback loop wherein model behavior is determined not only by developers, but by the strategic and incidental adaptation of the real world. This talk introduces mecha-nudges: subtle changes in the decision environment that systematically influence agent behavior without perturbing humans. As we show with evidence from the Etsy marketplace and the OpenAI/Huggingface incident, mecha-nudging is already happening at a global scale, yet going largely unnoticed.

 

Bio: Kawin Ethayarajh is an Assistant Professor of Applied AI at The University of Chicago, Booth School. Much in the way AI is hardware-bound and software-bound, it is also bound by the behavior of real-world actors, systems, and institutions; he studies this behavior-boundedness to close the loop on post-training, evaluation, and AI governance. Kawin’s work has received an ICML 2022 Outstanding Paper award, a Facebook Fellowship, and broad industry adoption. Prior to UChicago, he received a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.