Hello! I'm a graduate student in Media Studies / Sociology at Columbia University where I use mixed-methods approaches to research social impacts of AI, specifically human-AI interaction, trust and deception, and user well-being. I'm incredibly fortunate to receive advisement from James Chu. I studied Communication at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, where I got my start in research with Mason Allred and read a lot of dead philosophers.
This summer, I'm working as a graduate researcher in the Management Division at Columbia Business School with Alan Zhang, where we are investigating how emerging player performance technologies are adopted in amateur competitive youth sports.
I also lead a research group at Columbia AI Alignment Club (CAIAC), where my group evaluated truth-bias in reasoning LLMs (accepted to ICML 2025).
I love being outdoors, from the scorching Hawaiian summers to the brutal New York winters. A current goal is to run a sub-3:00 marathon (this is how I'm doing). Previously, I volunteered in the Republic of Kiribati for nine months; paced 45 miles of the HURT 100; and backpacked through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy with my wife.
I am applying to PhD programs (2026 cohort) to research the intersection of society, organizations, and human-AI Interaction. Feel free to reach out to chat about research, policy, or running!
Publications
Preprints
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Emilio Barkett, Olivia Long, and Madhavendra Thakur
Reasoning Isn't Enough: Examining Truth-Bias and Sycophancy in LLMs
Accepted at ICML 2025; Under review at NeurIPS 2025