Lara Dal Molin
Job Title
PhD Student
Research interests
Research interests
My research interests concern Artificial Intelligence technologies known as Large Language Models (LLMs), as an embodiment of the intersection between technology, language and gender. At the core of such intersection, LLMs are not solely artefacts, but non-neutral, complex systems that influence social reality and reinforce pre-existing orders and ideologies. In my PhD project, funded by the University of Edinburgh and University of Copenhagen joint programme in Social Data Science, I investigate hybrid qualitative-quantitative methods, inspired by the Design Justice framework, to address gender bias in LLMs.
I also currently tutor the courses Investigating Science in Society and Computational Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences.
Background
My background comprises Sociology, Politics and Artificial Intelligence. As an undergraduate student, I studied Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Surrey, where I combined classes in Social and Political Sciences and Computer Science. I graduated with a comparative thesis on the impact of digital surveillance of democracy and democratisation in the United States and China.
Later, I pursued a taught Masters in Artificial Intelligence at the University of St Andrews. My thesis, concerning the rise of cooperation under fluctuating resource availability in an agent-based model, was published in the proceedings of the 2021 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO).