Emilio Barkett

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Hello! I'm a graduate student in Media Studies / Sociology at Columbia University where I use quantitative and qualitative methods to research social impacts of AI, specifically human-AI interaction, language model behavior, and organizational adoption of technology. I'm incredibly fortunate to receive advisement from Diane Vaughan and 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.

I lead a research group at Columbia AI Alignment Club (CAIAC), where my group evaluates how language models exhibit human behaviors. Previously we evaluated escalation of commitment in LLMs and evaluated truth-bias in reasoning LLMs (ICML 2025). I also lead a Policy Fellowship with ~25 students where we focus on generating new research ideas in AI Safety.

This summer, I worked as a graduate researcher in the Management Division at Columbia Business School with Alan Zhang, where we investigated how emerging player performance technologies are adopted in amateur competitive youth sports.

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

Works in Progress

Contributions as an RA