Ashton Anderson
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. I'm broadly interested in research at the intersection of AI, data, and society. I run the Computational Social Science Lab.
Background
- July 2017: I started as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
- July 2015: I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computational Social Science group at Microsoft Research in New York City.
- December 2014: I was on the job market. My application materials: CV and research statement.
Publications
Designing Skill-Compatible AI:
Methodologies and Frameworks in Chess,
Karim Hamade, Reid McIlroy-Young, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson.
ICLR 2024.
pdf
ICL-Markup: Structuring In-Context Learning using Soft-Token Tags,
Marc-Etienne Brunet, Ashton Anderson, and Rich Zemel.
NeurIPS: R0-FoMo Workshop 2023.
pdf
People Perceive Algorithmic Assessments as Less Fair and Trustworthy Than Identical Human Assessments,
Lillio Mok, Sasha Nanda, and Ashton Anderson.
CSCW 2023.
pdf
Echo Tunnels: Polarized News Sharing Online Runs Narrow but Deep,
Lillio Mok, Michael Inzlicht, and Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2023.
pdf
Reddit in the Time of COVID,
Venia Veselovsky and Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2023.
pdf
Implications of Model Indeterminacy for Explanations of Automated Decisions,
Marc-Etienne Brunet, Ashton Anderson, and Rich Zemel.
NeurIPS 2022. Oral presentation.
pdf
Mimetic Models: Ethical Implications of AI that Acts Like You,
Reid McIlroy-Young, Jon Kleinberg, Siddhartha Sen, Solon Barocas, and Ashton Anderson.
AIES 2022.
pdf
Anticipated versus Actual Effects of Platform Design Change: A Case Study of Twitter's Character Limit,
Kristina Gligoric, Justyna Czestochowska, Ashton Anderson, and Robert West.
CSCW 2022.
pdf
Learning Models of Individual Behavior in Chess,
Reid McIlroy-Young, Russell Wang, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, and Ashton Anderson.
KDD 2022.
pdf
Quantifying the Creator Economy: A Large-Scale Analysis of Patreon,
Lana El Sanyoura and Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2022.
pdf
The Dynamics of Exploration on Spotify,
Lillio Mok, Samuel F. Way, Lucas Maystre, and Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2022.
pdf
Measuring Alignment of Online Grassroots Political Communities with Political Campaigns,
Cameron Raymond, Isaac Waller, and Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2022.
pdf
Quantifying social organization and political polarization in online platforms,
Isaac Waller and Ashton Anderson.
Nature, 2021.
pdf |
code and data
Detecting Individual Decision-Making Style: Exploring Behavioral Stylometry in Chess,
Reid McIlroy-Young, Russell Wang, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson.
NeurIPS 2021.
pdf |
supplement |
slides
Success stories cause false beliefs about success,
George Lifchits, Ashton Anderson, Daniel G. Goldstein, Jake M. Hofman and Duncan J. Watts.
Judgment and Decision Making (JDM), 2021.
pdf
|
code
Imagine All the People: Characterizing Social Music Sharing on Reddit,
Veniamin Veselovsky, Isaac Waller, Ashton Anderson.
ICWSM 2021.
pdf |
interactive web demo
Linguistic effects on news headline success: Evidence from thousands of online field experiments,
Kristina Gligorić, George Lifchits, Robert West, Ashton Anderson.
PLOS One.
pdf
Where To Next? A Dynamic Model of User Preferences,
Francesco Sanna Passino, Lucas Maystre, Dmitrii Moor, Ashton Anderson, Mounia Lalmas.
WWW 2021.
pdf | slides
The Complementary Nature of Perceived and Actual Time Spent Online in Measuring Digital Well-being,
Lillio Mok and Ashton Anderson.
CSCW 2021.
pdf
Aligning Superhuman AI with Human Behavior: Chess as a Model System,
Reid McIlroy-Young, Siddhartha Sen, Jon Kleinberg, Ashton Anderson.
KDD 2020.
pdf
Algorithmic Effects on the Diversity of Consumption on Spotify,
Ashton Anderson, Lucas Maystre, Rishabh Mehrotra, Ian Anderson, Mounia Lalmas.
WWW 2020.
pdf | slides
Causal Effects of Brevity on Style and Success in Social Media, Kristina Gligorić, Ashton Anderson, Robert West. CSCW 2019.
pdf | slides
Generalists and Specialists: Using Community Embeddings to Quantify Activity Diversity in Online Platforms, Isaac Waller and Ashton Anderson. WWW 2019.
pdf | slides | interactive web demo
Understanding the Origins of Bias in Word Embeddings, Marc-Etienne Brunet, Colleen Alkalay-Houlihan, Ashton Anderson, Rich Zemel. ICML 2019.
pdf | supplement | slides | code
From “Welcome New Gabbers” to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: The Evolution of Gab, Reid McIlroy-Young and Ashton Anderson. ICWSM 2019 (poster paper).
pdf | poster
Personal Bests as Reference Points, Ashton Anderson and Etan Green. PNAS, 2018.
pdf | slides
How Constraints Affect Content: The Case of Twitter's Switch from 140 to 280 Characters, Kristina Gligorić, Ashton Anderson, Robert West. ICWSM 2018.
pdf
Mapping the Invocation Structure of Online Political Interaction, Manish Raghavan, Ashton Anderson, Jon Kleinberg. WWW 2018.
pdf | slides
Auditing Search Engines for Differential Satisfaction Across Demographics, Rishabh Mehrotra, Ashton Anderson, Fernando Diaz, Amit Sharma, Hanna Wallach, Emine Yilmaz. WWW 2017.
pdf | slides
Assessing Human Error Against a Benchmark of Perfection, Ashton Anderson, Jon Kleinberg, Sendhil Mullainathan. KDD 2016. (and invited journal version in TKDD Special Issue on Best Papers of KDD 2016).
pdf | journal version | slides
Exploring limits to prediction in complex social systems, Travis Martin, Jake M. Hofman, Amit Sharma, Ashton Anderson, Duncan J. Watts. WWW 2016
pdf | slides
Global Diffusion via Cascading Invitations: Structure, Growth, and Homophily, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, Jure Leskovec, Mitul Tiwari. WWW 2015.
pdf | slides
The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion, Sharad Goel, Ashton Anderson, Jake Hofman, Duncan J. Watts. Management Science, 2015.
pdf
Political Ideology and Racial Preferences in Online Dating, Ashton Anderson, Sharad Goel, Gregory Huber, Neil Malhotra, Duncan J. Watts. Sociological Science, 2014.
pdf
Engaging with Massive Online Courses, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WWW 2014. Best Paper runner-up.
pdf | slides
The Dynamics of Repeat Consumption, Ashton Anderson, Ravi Kumar, Andrew Tomkins, Sergei Vassilvitskii. WWW 2014.
pdf | slides
Steering User Behavior With Badges, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WWW 2013.
pdf | slides
Discovering Value from Community Activity on Focused Question-Answering Sites: A Case Study of Stack Overflow,
Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. KDD 2012.
pdf | slides
Towards a Computational History of the ACL: 1980 – 2008, Ashton Anderson, Dan McFarland, and Dan Jurafsky.
ACL 2012 Special Workshop on Rediscovering 50 Years of Discoveries.
pdf | slides
Effects of User Similarity in Social Media, Ashton Anderson, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Jure Leskovec. WSDM 2012.
pdf | slides
Internal Implementation, Ashton Anderson, Yoav Shoham, Alon Altman. AAMAS 2010.
pdf | slides
You can contact me at [my first name] @cs.toronto.edu.