Maarten Sap

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="tools/style.css">  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-T8EHFV852B"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-T8EHFV852B'); </script> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content=""> <meta name="author" content="Maarten Sap"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.0.0/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Gn5384xqQ1aoWXA+058RXPxPg6fy4IWvTNh0E263XmFcJlSAwiGgFAW/dAiS6JXm" crossorigin="anonymous"> <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-KJ3o2DKtIkvYIK3UENzmM7KCkRr/rE9/Qpg6aAZGJwFDMVNA/GpGFF93hXpG5KkN" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/popper.js/1.12.9/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha384-ApNbgh9B+Y1QKtv3Rn7W3mgPxhU9K/ScQsAP7hUibX39j7fakFPskvXusvfa0b4Q" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> <script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.0.0/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-JZR6Spejh4U02d8jOt6vLEHfe/JQGiRRSQQxSfFWpi1MquVdAyjUar5+76PVCmYl" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="images/apple-touch-icon.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="imagesfavicon-32x32.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="imagesfavicon-16x16.png"> <link rel="manifest" href="tools/site.webmanifest"> <link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="images/favicon.ico"> <title>Maarten Sap - Home</title> </head> <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/marked/marked.min.js"></script> <body> <nav class="navbar navbar-expand-sm navbar-dark bg-dark"> <div class="container" style="max-width: 80%;"> <a class="navbar-brand" href="index.html">Maarten Sap</a> <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarNav" aria-controls="navbarNav" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation"> <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span> </button> <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarNav"> <ul class="navbar-nav"> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link" href="publications.html">Publications</a> </li> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link" href="contact.html">Contact</a> </li> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link" href="teaching.html">Teaching</a> </li> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link" href="aboutme.html">About Me</a> </li> <li class="nav-item"> <a class="nav-link" href="cv.html">CV</a> </li>   <li class="nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" href="" id="navbarDropdownMenuLink" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false"> Notes/Blogposts </a> <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="navbarDropdownMenuLink"> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/01-apply-grad-school.html">Applying to grad school</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/02-giving-talk-feedback.html">Giving feedback for talks</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/03-presenting-your-research.html">Presenting your research</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/04-turking-tips.html">Turking tips</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/05-rebuttals.html">Writing rebuttals</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/06-job-search-2020.html">Notes from my 2020 Academic Job Search</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/07-writing-rec-letters.html">Writing recommendation letters</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/08-third-year-part-1-postdoc.html">Reflections after 2 years as Faculty -- Part 1: Postdoc year</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/09-third-year-part-2-first-year.html">Reflections after 2 years as Faculty -- Part 2: First year faculty</a> <a class="dropdown-item" href="notes/10-third-year-part-3-second-year.html">Reflections after 2 years as Faculty -- Part 3: Second year Faculty</a> </div>  </li> </ul> </div> </div> </nav>   <div class="container" style="padding-top: 10px;max-width: 80%;"> <div class="row justify-content-center"> <div class="col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-10">   <div class="jumbotron" style="padding: 2rem 1rem;"> <div class="container row justify-content-center"> <div class="col-lg-3 col-md-3 col-sm-12"> <img class="profile" src="images/headshots/armsCrossed_square_sm.jpg" alt="Maarten Sap" style="width: 100%; margin-bottom: 2em;"> <a class="btn btn-light" href="http://twitter.com/maartensap" target="_blank"> <img src="images/twitter-icon.png" class="icon" title="Twitter Profile" alt="Twitter Profile"> </a> <a class="btn btn-light" href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gFN4QUYAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank"> <img src="images/google-scholar-icon.png" class="icon" title="Google Scholar Profile" alt="Google Scholar Profile"> </a> <a class="btn btn-light" href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Maarten-Sap/2729164" target="_blank"> <img src="images/s2-logo-bw.png" class="icon" title="Semantic Scholar Profile" alt="Semantic Scholar Profile"> </a> </div> <div class="col-lg-9 col-md-9 col-sm-12 lead" style="padding-right:0px;"> <h2 class="display-4">Maarten Sap</h2> <p> I am an assistant professor at <a href="https://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/" target="_blank">CMU's LTI</a> department with a courtesy appointment in <a href="https://hcii.cmu.edu/">HCII</a>, and a part-time research scientist at the <a href="https://allenai.org" target="_blank">Allen Institute for AI (AI2)</a>. My research focuses on endowing NLP systems with <strong>social intelligence and social commonsense</strong>, and understanding <strong>social inequality and bias</strong> in language. </p> <p> Before this, I was a Postdoc/Young Investigator at the <a href="https://allenai.org" target="_blank">Allen Institute for AI (AI2)</a>, working on project <a target="_blank" href="https://allenai.org/commonsense/">Mosaic</a>. I received my PhD from the University of Washington where I was advised by <a target="_blank" href="https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~nasmith/">Noah Smith</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~yejin/">Yejin Choi</a>, and have interned at AI2 working on social commonsense reasoning, and at Microsoft Research working on deep learning models for understanding human cognition. <br><a href="bio.html" style="font-size: .95rem;">[bio for talks]</a> </p>  </div> <div class="col-12" style="background: white; padding: 4px; border-radius: 5px 5px; font-size: 1.15rem; font-weight: 300;"> <h5><em>Recent updates:</em></h5> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>January 2025</em></strong> 👨🏼‍🏫🧠: Happy to give a talk in <em>Artificial Social Intelligence</em> at the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.scienceofintelligence.de/">Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence" (SCIoI)</a> at the Technische Universität Berlin.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>January 2025</em></strong> 👨🏼‍🏫📢: I'm happy to be giving a talk at the <a target="_blank" href="https://sites.google.com/view/multilang-counterspeech-gen/">First Workshop on Multilingual Counterspeech Generation</a> at COLING 2025 (remotely)!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>December 2024</em></strong> 🇨🇦⛰️: Excited to be attending my very first NeurIPS conference in Vancouver BC! I'll be giving a talk at <a target="_blank" href="https://newinml.github.io/">New in ML</a> at 3pm on Tuesday!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>November 2024</em></strong> : I received a <a target="_blank" href="https://news.pantheon.cmu.edu/stories/archives/2024/november/scs-faculty-receive-google-academic-research-awards">Google Academic Research Award</a> for our work on participatory impact assessment of future AI use cases.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>November 2024</em></strong> 🫂👨‍🏫: Very excited that I now have a courtesy appointment in the <a target="_blank" href="https://hcii.cmu.edu/">Human Computer Interaction Institute</a>!</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>November 2024</em></strong> 🔍🧑‍🎓: As a reminder, due to my lab being quite full already, I'm not taking any students in this upcoming PhD application cycle 😟.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: .5em;"><em><strong>November 2024</em></strong> 🏖️📚: Excited to give a talk at the <a target="_blank" href="https://sites.google.com/cs.stonybrook.edu/wnu2024">6th Workshop on Narrative Understanding</a> on <em>Computational Methods of Social Causes and Effects of Stories</em>.</p>  <p><small style="font-weight: 300;"><a target="_blank" href="news.html">[older news]</a></small></p> </div> </div> </div> <hr>     <div class="row"> <div class="col-12" id="research-group"> <h2>My research group:</h2> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/dan-chechelnitsky.png"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://chechelnitskd.github.io/">Dan Chechelnitsky</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student <br><small>co-advised with <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S5NGkFsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Chrysoula Zerva</a></small></h5> </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/joel-mire.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://joelmire.notion.site/">Joel Mire</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI MLT student </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/karina-halevy.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://enscma2.github.io/">Karina Halevy</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student <br><small>co-advised with <a href="https://scholar.google.com.vn/citations?user=-y6SIhQAAAAJ&hl=vi">Mona Diab</a></small> </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/jimin-mun.jpeg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://jiminmun.github.io/">Jimin Mun</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/jocelyn-shen.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://jocelynshen.com/">Jocelyn Shen</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> MIT PhD student <br><small>co-advised with <a href="https://www.media.mit.edu/people/cynthiab/overview/">Cynthia Breazeal</a></small> </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/akhila-yerukola.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://akhila-yerukola.github.io/" target="_blank">Akhila Yerukola</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/mingqian-zheng.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://eeelisa.github.io/" target="_blank">Mingqian Zheng</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student <br><small>co-advised with <a href="https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cprose/">Carolyn Rosé</a></small> </p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="col-lg-3 col-xl-3 col-sm-4 col-md-4"> <div class="card no-border"> <img class="card-img-profile" src="images/students/xuhui-zhou.jpg"/> <div class="card-body text-center"> <h5 class="card-title"><a href="https://xuhuizhou.github.io/" target="_blank">Xuhui Zhou</a></h5> <p class="card-text font-italic"> LTI PhD student </p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <hr> <div class="row"> <div class="col-12"> <h2>Overarching Research Themes</h2> </div> <div class="col-12" id="content"> *Extracted by GPT-4, there may be inconsistencies.* #### *Ethics and Human-Centered AI* My research group explores the ethical implications of AI technologies and their impact on human interactions. We focus on understanding diverse perspectives on AI through studies such as [Diverse Perspectives on AI](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07287), which examines the acceptability and reasoning surrounding potential AI use cases. Additionally, we investigate biases inherent in AI systems, as shown in the paper [Rejected Dialects: Biases Against African American Language in Reward Models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.06730), which highlights discrimination against specific dialects. Lastly, we explore user-driven frameworks for addressing biases in AI companions, contributing to more equitable AI deployment. #### *Narrative Analysis and Empathy* My research group explores the complexities of narrative structures and their emotional impacts in various contexts. We delve into how narratives shape perceptions through works like [The Empirical Variability of Narrative Perceptions of Social Media Texts](https://aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-main.1113/), that examines the differences in understanding social media narratives. We also look at empathy in storytelling, as illustrated in [HEART-felt Narratives: Tracing Empathy and Narrative Style in Personal Stories with LLMs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.17633), which highlights how narrative styles influence empathetic engagement. Furthermore, our research into [Modeling Empathic Similarity in Personal Narratives](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14246) combines narrative analysis with AI methodologies to measure empathic responses. #### *AI Agents and Social Intelligence* My research group explores the design and evaluation of AI agents equipped with social intelligence capabilities. We focus on how these agents can interact effectively with humans, as demonstrated in the paper [Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy? The Misleading Success of Simulating Social Interactions With LLMs](http://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05020), which critiques the efficacy of LLMs in mimicking real human interactions. We also investigate methods to improve AI's truthfulness and utility in social contexts through our work on [AI-LieDar: Examine the Trade-off Between Utility and Truthfulness in LLM Agents](https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09013). Lastly, our research on [SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agents](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.11667) offers insights into assessing and enhancing the social behaviors of AI agents. #### *Addressing Toxicity in Language* My research group explores methods for mitigating toxic language generated by AI systems. We investigate multilingual challenges in toxicity through papers like [PolygloToxicityPrompts: Multilingual Evaluation of Neural Toxic Degeneration in Large Language Models](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09373), which evaluates the performance of models in different linguistic contexts. Additionally, we examine the barriers that counter-speakers face in combating online hate in the paper [Counterspeakers’ Perspectives: Unveiling Barriers and AI Needs in the Fight against Online Hate](https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00179), focusing on user experiences and challenges. Our work also includes addressing the implications of AI-generated content, as seen in the framework [COBRA Frames: Contextual Reasoning about Effects and Harms of Offensive Statements](http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.01985), which provides insights into the context and consequences of harmful language. </div>  </div>  <div class="row" style="margin-top: 20px;"> <div class="col-12"><h3>More about me</h3></div> <div class="col-12 btn-toolbar"role="toolbar"> <div class="btn-group mr-2"> <a href="publications.html" class="btn btn-light">Browse my publications</a> </div> <div class="btn-group mr-2"> <a href="contact.html" class="btn btn-light">Contact me</a> </div> <div class="btn-group mr-2"> <a href="aboutme.html" class="btn btn-light">More about me</a> </div> <div class="btn-group mr-2"> <a href="cv.html" class="btn btn-light" target="_blank"> CV</a> </div> </div> </div> </div>     </div> </div> </body>  <footer class="footer"> <hr> <div style="width:99%">   <div class="row"> <div class="col-2"> </div> <div class="col-8 text-center"> <img src="images/LTI-logo.png" style="width:300px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> </div> <div class="col-2 mb-1"> <div class="text-muted small" style="font-style: italic; text-align: right;"> Last updated: <br> 2024-09-19 </div> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </html> <script> document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = marked.parse(document.getElementById('content').innerHTML); </script> <style> .card { padding: 0px; margin: 10px 5px; } .card-img-profile { margin: auto; border-radius: .25em; max-height: 300px; max-width: 300px; height: 100%; width: 100%; } .card-img-top { max-height: 170px; max-width: 70%; width: auto; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; } .btn { margin-top: .2em; } .profile { border-radius: .1em; box-shadow: 0 4px 8px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 6px 20px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.19); } .no-border{ border: none; } </style>

CINXE.COM

Maarten Sap - Home