Sungha Kang

Yiwei Xu, Saloni Dash, Sungha Kang et al.

This study examined how AI-generated summaries, which have become visually prominent in online search results, affect how users think about different issues. In a preregistered randomized controlled experiment, participants (N = 2,004) viewed mock search result pages varying in the presence (vs. absence), placement (top vs. middle), and stance (benefit-framed vs. harm-framed) of AI-generated summaries across four publicly debated topics. Compared to a no-summary control group, participants exposed to AI-generated summaries reported issue attitudes, behavioral intentions, and policy support that aligned more closely with the AI summary stance. The summaries placed at the top of the page produced stronger shifts in users' issue attitudes (but not behavioral intentions or policy support) than those placed at the middle of the page. We also observed moderating effects from issue familiarity and general trust toward AI. In addition, users perceived the AI summaries more useful when it emphasized health harms versus benefits. These findings suggest that AI-generated search summaries can significantly shape public perceptions, raising important implications for the design and regulation of AI-integrated information ecosystems.

Shahan Ali Memon, Soham De, Sungha Kang et al. · cmu

In this paper, we introduce a speculative design methodology for studying the behavior of generative AI systems, framing design as a mode of inquiry. We propose bridging seemingly unrelated domains to generate intentional context voids, using these tasks as probes to elicit AI model behavior. We demonstrate this through a case study: probing the ChatGPT system (GPT-4 and DALL-E) to generate headshots from professional Curricula Vitae (CVs). In contrast to traditional ways, our approach assesses system behavior under conditions of radical uncertainty -- when forced to invent entire swaths of missing context -- revealing subtle stereotypes and value-laden assumptions. We qualitatively analyze how the system interprets identity and competence markers from CVs, translating them into visual portraits despite the missing context (i.e. physical descriptors). We show that within this context void, the AI system generates biased representations, potentially relying on stereotypical associations or blatant hallucinations.

Yuchen He, Namjoon Suh, Xiaoming Huo et al.

We prove the support recovery for a general class of linear and nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equation (PDE) identification from a single noisy trajectory using $\ell_1$ regularized Pseudo-Least Squares model~($\ell_1$-PsLS). In any associative $\mathbb{R}$-algebra generated by finitely many differentiation operators that contain the unknown PDE operator, applying $\ell_1$-PsLS to a given data set yields a family of candidate models with coefficients $\mathbf{c}(λ)$ parameterized by the regularization weight $λ\geq 0$. The trace of $\{\mathbf{c}(λ)\}_{λ\geq 0}$ suffers from high variance due to data noises and finite difference approximation errors. We provide a set of sufficient conditions which guarantee that, from a single trajectory data denoised by a Local-Polynomial filter, the support of $\mathbf{c}(λ)$ asymptotically converges to the true signed-support associated with the underlying PDE for sufficiently many data and a certain range of $λ$. We also show various numerical experiments to validate our theory.