our Initiatives

In order to further shape the field and promote the highest-leverage questions for further research, the Institute focuses on three initiatives around which we orient our Tech Talks, conferences, videos, newsletter, as well as several key projects.

1. REPAIRING SOCIAL MEDIA

People spend a great deal of time communicating with each other online, yet big questions remain about whether this is time well spent.  At an individual level, finding support from others has never been easier, yet questions exist about whether these mediums hurt psychological well-being, especially amongst vulnerable populations. At a societal level, information about world events has never been more easily accessed, yet as humanity faces grand challenges such as climate change, maintaining trust in democracy, averting nuclear war, and preventing the next pandemic, social media platforms have been cited as polarizing discourse about such issues and preventing progress. TQ can improve these platforms by improving our understanding of how these platforms are affecting both individual well-being and societal cohesion and pointing the way towards evidence-based solutions.

2. PROMOTING AI VALUE ALIGNMENT

Access to powerful AI algorithms is increasingly being applied across a wide array of domains, yet the understanding of how to responsibly use such tools has not kept pace with adoption. Responsible use of such systems requires an understanding of how they are built in order to anticipate the misalignment that often occurs when systems are built with imperfect objective functions predicted by imperfect sets of variables derived from imperfect training data. Questions about value alignment are often asked by computer scientists, but without adequate leadership from behavioral scientists, who empirically study the psychology of values, and business leaders, who are often tasked with making value-laden decisions concerning algorithms without prior training. TQ is essential for doing this both effectively, leveraging the right variables to maximize benefit, and responsibly, to minimize harm to our psychological health.

3. DEFINING HEALTHY MIXED REALITY

New technologies are increasingly allowing us to shape our environment and experiences in ways that were previously not possible.  Unlike the natural world, where balance was achieved through thousands of years of coevolution, these new environments will require conscious design choices that allow a broad set of people to thrive within them. This conscious design will necessarily require TQ in order to leverage the forces that shape our behavior and psychological health toward designing the maximally beneficial space possible.