X
Ashton Anderson - University of Toronto

Ashton Anderson

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. I'm broadly interested in research at the intersection of AI, data, and society. I run the Computational Social Science Lab.

Background

Publications

Maia-2: A Unified Model for Human-AI Alignment in Chess, Zhenwei Tang, Difan Jiao, Reid McIlroy-Young, Jon Kleinberg, Siddhartha Sen, and Ashton Anderson. NeurIPS 2024.
pdf

Disclosures & Disclaimers: Investigating the Impact of Transparency Disclosures and Reliability Disclaimers on Learner-LLM Interactions, Jessica Y. Bo, Harsh Kumar, Michael Liut, and Ashton Anderson. HCOMP 2024.
pdf

SPIN: Sparsifying and Integrating Internal Neurons in Large Language Models for Text Classification, Difan Jiao, Yilun Liu, Zhenwei Tang, Daniel Matter, Jürgen Pfeffer, and Ashton Anderson. ACL Findings 2024.
pdf | interactive web demo

Designing Skill-Compatible AI: Methodologies and Frameworks in Chess, Karim Hamade, Reid McIlroy-Young, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson. ICLR 2024.
pdf

ICL-Markup: Structuring In-Context Learning using Soft-Token Tags, Marc-Etienne Brunet, Ashton Anderson, and Rich Zemel. NeurIPS: R0-FoMo Workshop 2023.
pdf

People Perceive Algorithmic Assessments as Less Fair and Trustworthy Than Identical Human Assessments, Lillio Mok, Sasha Nanda, and Ashton Anderson. CSCW 2023.
pdf

Echo Tunnels: Polarized News Sharing Online Runs Narrow but Deep, Lillio Mok, Michael Inzlicht, and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2023.
pdf

Reddit in the Time of COVID, Venia Veselovsky and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2023.
pdf

Implications of Model Indeterminacy for Explanations of Automated Decisions, Marc-Etienne Brunet, Ashton Anderson, and Rich Zemel. NeurIPS 2022. Oral presentation.
pdf

Mimetic Models: Ethical Implications of AI that Acts Like You, Reid McIlroy-Young, Jon Kleinberg, Siddhartha Sen, Solon Barocas, and Ashton Anderson. AIES 2022.
pdf

Anticipated versus Actual Effects of Platform Design Change: A Case Study of Twitter's Character Limit, Kristina Gligoric, Justyna Czestochowska, Ashton Anderson, and Robert West. CSCW 2022.
pdf

Learning Models of Individual Behavior in Chess, Reid McIlroy-Young, Russell Wang, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, and Ashton Anderson. KDD 2022.
pdf

Quantifying the Creator Economy: A Large-Scale Analysis of Patreon, Lana El Sanyoura and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2022.
pdf

The Dynamics of Exploration on Spotify, Lillio Mok, Samuel F. Way, Lucas Maystre, and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2022.
pdf

Measuring Alignment of Online Grassroots Political Communities with Political Campaigns, Cameron Raymond, Isaac Waller, and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2022.
pdf

Quantifying social organization and political polarization in online platforms, Isaac Waller and Ashton Anderson. Nature, 2021.
pdf | code and data

Detecting Individual Decision-Making Style: Exploring Behavioral Stylometry in Chess, Reid McIlroy-Young, Russell Wang, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson. NeurIPS 2021.
pdf | supplement | slides

Success stories cause false beliefs about success, George Lifchits, Ashton Anderson, Daniel G. Goldstein, Jake M. Hofman and Duncan J. Watts. Judgment and Decision Making (JDM), 2021.
pdf | code

Imagine All the People: Characterizing Social Music Sharing on Reddit, Veniamin Veselovsky, Isaac Waller, Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2021.
pdf | interactive web demo

Linguistic effects on news headline success: Evidence from thousands of online field experiments, Kristina Gligorić, George Lifchits, Robert West, Ashton Anderson. PLOS One.
pdf

Where To Next? A Dynamic Model of User Preferences, Francesco Sanna Passino, Lucas Maystre, Dmitrii Moor, Ashton Anderson, Mounia Lalmas. WWW 2021.
pdf | slides

The Complementary Nature of Perceived and Actual Time Spent Online in Measuring Digital Well-being, Lillio Mok and Ashton Anderson. CSCW 2021.
pdf

Aligning Superhuman AI with Human Behavior: Chess as a Model System, Reid McIlroy-Young, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson. KDD 2020.
pdf

Algorithmic Effects on the Diversity of Consumption on Spotify, Ashton Anderson, Lucas Maystre, Rishabh Mehrotra, Ian Anderson, Mounia Lalmas. WWW 2020.
pdf | slides

Causal Effects of Brevity on Style and Success in Social Media, Kristina Gligorić, Ashton Anderson, Robert West. CSCW 2019.
pdf | slides

Generalists and Specialists: Using Community Embeddings to Quantify Activity Diversity in Online Platforms, Isaac Waller and Ashton Anderson. WWW 2019.
pdf | slides | interactive web demo

Understanding the Origins of Bias in Word Embeddings, Marc-Etienne Brunet, Colleen Alkalay-Houlihan, Ashton Anderson, Rich Zemel. ICML 2019.
pdf | supplement | slides | code

From “Welcome New Gabbers” to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: The Evolution of Gab, Reid McIlroy-Young and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2019 (poster paper).
pdf | poster

Personal Bests as Reference Points, Ashton Anderson and Etan Green. PNAS, 2018.
pdf | slides

How Constraints Affect Content: The Case of Twitter's Switch from 140 to 280 Characters, Kristina Gligorić, Ashton Anderson, Robert West. ICWSM 2018.
pdf

Mapping the Invocation Structure of Online Political Interaction, Manish Raghavan, Ashton Anderson, Jon Kleinberg. WWW 2018.
pdf | slides

Auditing Search Engines for Differential Satisfaction Across Demographics, Rishabh Mehrotra, Ashton Anderson, Fernando Diaz, Amit Sharma, Hanna Wallach, Emine Yilmaz. WWW 2017.
pdf | slides

Assessing Human Error Against a Benchmark of Perfection, Ashton Anderson, Jon Kleinberg, Sendhil Mullainathan. KDD 2016. (and invited journal version in TKDD Special Issue on Best Papers of KDD 2016).
pdf | journal version | slides

Exploring limits to prediction in complex social systems, Travis Martin, Jake M. Hofman, Amit Sharma, Ashton Anderson, Duncan J. Watts. WWW 2016
pdf | slides

Global Diffusion via Cascading Invitations: Structure, Growth, and Homophily, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, Jure Leskovec, Mitul Tiwari. WWW 2015.
pdf | slides

The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion, Sharad Goel, Ashton Anderson, Jake Hofman, Duncan J. Watts. Management Science, 2015.
pdf

Political Ideology and Racial Preferences in Online Dating, Ashton Anderson, Sharad Goel, Gregory Huber, Neil Malhotra, Duncan J. Watts. Sociological Science, 2014.
pdf

Engaging with Massive Online Courses, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WWW 2014. Best Paper runner-up.
pdf | slides

The Dynamics of Repeat Consumption, Ashton Anderson, Ravi Kumar, Andrew Tomkins, Sergei Vassilvitskii. WWW 2014.
pdf | slides

Steering User Behavior With Badges, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WWW 2013.
pdf | slides

Discovering Value from Community Activity on Focused Question-Answering Sites: A Case Study of Stack Overflow,
Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. KDD 2012.
pdf | slides

Towards a Computational History of the ACL: 1980 – 2008, Ashton Anderson, Dan McFarland, and Dan Jurafsky.
ACL 2012 Special Workshop on Rediscovering 50 Years of Discoveries
.
pdf | slides

Effects of User Similarity in Social Media, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WSDM 2012.
pdf | slides

Internal Implementation, Ashton Anderson, Yoav Shoham, Alon Altman. AAMAS 2010.
pdf | slides