Abstract

This talk reviews new developments in computational social science from a sociological perspective. It covers five major waves of transformation, from pre-2009 foundations in agent-based modeling, social networks, simulation, and text mining to the contemporary moment of ChatGPT, large language models, and AI research tools. It then features an example from the speaker’s ongoing research on evolving career patterns in an AI-transformed labor market. The talk concludes with a critical discussion of what LLMs can and cannot do for social science research.

About the Speaker

Xi Song is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on social mobility, occupations and work, Asian Americans, and computational methods. She earned a BA in Sociology from Renmin University of China in 2008 and an MPhil from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2010. She then received both an MS in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2015. She is a member of the Sociological Research Association and received the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2021.