About

Hao Cui

Hao is a Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where she studies human-machine social systems. She is the lead author of a recent comprehensive review in the field of AI-enhanced collective intelligence, integrating perspectives from complexity science and network science to understand how hybrid systems think, adapt, and make decisions. Currently, Hao’s research focuses on human-AI interaction within collaborative contexts, examining how people perceive and behave when AI takes on a spectrum of functional roles and levels of agency. Using online behavioral experiments, she explores the behavioral and perceptual dynamics of individuals, as well as the broader societal implications of integrating AI into social systems and decision-making processes.

Prior to her role at Trinity, Hao was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Sociology and the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin. Her interests in social systems began with her doctoral research on collective attention and online behavior. She earned a Ph.D. in Network Science from Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria, where she studied the dynamics of microblogging platforms — investigating the mechanisms and patterns behind the emergence of popular hashtags using large-scale data analytics.

Hao’s research has been featured in The Conversation, the Dutch national daily de Volkskrant, and MIT Technology Review (Chinese edition).