Dr. Richard Landers
University of Minnesota

Session abstract

The use of large language models (LLMs) in research represents an extraordinarily broad range of options and opportunities, from consulting ChatGPT like a research assistant to the real-time delivery of LLM-generated content to research participants. Whatever the use case, the diverse new capabilities brought by LLMs bring an equally diverse new set of challenges and risks. In this lecture, we’ll first explore what social scientists need to know about the technical foundations of LLMs to make good use of them. Next, we’ll explore LLM use cases that can be executed with no or limited technical ability. Finally, we briefly explore more advanced uses of LLMs, including automated qualitative coding and use of LLM embeddings in natural language models. In the application activity, participants will work through the engineering steps needed to execute one of the use cases and describe the risks of the approach taken.

Presenter biography

Richard N. Landers, Ph.D., is the John P. Campbell Distinguished Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He is Principal Investigator for TNTLAB (Testing New Technologies in Learning, Assessment and Behavior), where his research concerns the use of innovative technologies like games, gamification, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, to improve psychometric assessment, employee selection, adult learning, and research methods. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, American Psychological Association, and Association for Psychological Science. His work appears primarily in psychology journals, such as American Psychologist, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Psychological Methods, and in interdisciplinary outlets, including Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and Simulation & Gaming. He is the incoming editor-in-chief for the interdisciplinary American Psychological Association journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior, author of a statistics textbook and a research methods textbook, and editor of two volumes: Social Media in Employee Selection and Cambridge Handbook of Technology and Employee Behavior. Dr. Landers has been featured in the popular press, including Forbes, Business Insider, and Popular Science, and he regularly consults with industry as president of Landers Workforce Science LLC, primarily by designing and auditing employee hiring systems incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning.