About me
I am a computational social scientist and Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, based at the Centre for Sociology of Humans and Machines (SOHAM). I study collective dynamics in social systems, with a focus on how algorithms and AI shape attention, belief, knowledge, and social interaction.
My research began with questions about collective attention and online information dynamics. During my PhD in Network Science at Central European University, I investigated how ranking algorithms and platform interventions shape public attention on social media. Building on this foundation, my postdoctoral research at University College Dublin and Trinity has expanded to human–AI social systems. I study how AI agents influence collective beliefs, how people respond to AI in positions of authority, and how AI-generated knowledge differs from human-produced knowledge.
I combine large-scale digital trace data, behavioural experiments, agent-based modelling, and network science to investigate these questions. I am also the lead author of a review on AI-enhanced collective intelligence published in Patterns, which proposes a multilayer framework for understanding how human–AI interactions shape collective intelligence.
My work has been featured in The Conversation, de Volkskrant, MIT Technology Review (Chinese edition), and LSE Impact.
“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like humans, but that humans will begin to think like computers.”
— Sydney J. Harris
Research
Switch between the roles machines play and the themes I study, click a column to see the projects behind it, and click a project to see how it fits.
Selected publications
See all publications →Gender bias in perception of human managers extends to AI managers
Cui, H., Yasseri, T.
Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 21, 100984
Attention dynamics on the Chinese social media Sina Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic
Cui, H., Kertész, J.
EPJ Data Science, 10(1), 8