I am a PhD student in Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, broadly studying culture, values, cognition and individual differences within the space of AI for Social Science. I am also member of Stanford–Berkeley Computational Culture Lab and a fellow of International AI Evaluation Programme.

👤 About Me

I am intrigued by big questions about humans, society, and AI:

• How do AI systems fundamentally differ from human intelligence, and what new theories or frameworks can we develop to study their unique characteristics?
• Given that large language models represent a compressed form of collective human knowledge, what new insights about human behavior and society can we uncover by studying their concept representations?
• How do AI systems, as social actors, challenge and alter the current interaction dynamic and power structure?

Prior to Stanford, I completed my M.A. in Computational Social Science at The University of Chicago, advised by Dr. James Evans. Together, we explored how Generative Agent-Based Modelling can be used to simulate psychological and social phenomena. Dr. Evans has profoundly influenced me in many dimensions: he taught me to pursue bold ideas with confidence, support others generously, and carry a strong, decisive energy into everything I do. I also learned the “gives a week, takes a week; gives a minute, takes a minute” philosophy from him, which continues to guide how I approach research and life.

Before that, I earned my B.A. in Computer Science and Psychology (Honours) from The University of British Columbia, where I was fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Victoria Savalei, Dr. Kristin Laurin, and Dr. Christina Conati. Their patience, rigor, and unwavering support helped me find my footing in research and build a strong foundation for interdisciplinary work. At UBC, I explored topics from psychometric modeling of personality to socioeconomic cognition and explainable AI—experiences that continue to shape my curiosity and approach to scientific inquiry.

My research has since expanded through collaborations at Microsoft Research Asia with Dr. Xiaoyuan Yi and Dr. Xing Xie, where we examine AI alignment problems.

Across all my recent projects, I like to adopt a framework that treats intelligent systems as evolving and active social participants that reflect and reshape human society.

📝 Publications

Journal and Conference Proceedings

• Huang, M., & Evans, J. (In Press). Institutions as cached computation for resource-rational negotiation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X2510174X
• Bai, Y., Duan, S., Huang, M., Yao, J., Liu, Z., Zhang, P., … & Xie, X. (Under Review). IROTE: Human-like Traits Elicitation of Large Language Model via In-Context Self-Reflective Optimization. [Preprint]
• Zhang, H., Huang, M., & Wang, J. (Under Review). Evolving Collective Cognition in Human-Agent Hybrid Societies: How Agents Form Stances and Boundaries. [Preprint]
• Huang, M., Zhao, Q., Yi, X., & Xie, X. (2025). On the Dynamics of Multi-Agent LLM Communities Driven by Value Diversity. [Preprint]
• Kim, H., Yi, X., Yao, J., Huang, M., Bak, J., Evans, J., & Xie, X. (2025). Research on Superalignment Should Advance Now with Parallel Optimization of Competence and Conformity. [Preprint]
• Huang, M., Zhang, X., Soto, C., & Evans, J. (2026). Designing AI-Agents with Personalities: A Psychometric Approach. Personality Science. [Preprint]
• Zhang, X., Huang, M., Sun, J., & Savalei, V. (2025). Improving the Measurement of the Big Five via Alternative Formats for the BFI-2. Journal of Personality Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2025.2531187
• Yao, J., Yi, X., Duan, S., Wang, J., Bai, Y., Huang, M., … & Xie, X. (2025). Value compass benchmarks: A comprehensive, generative and self-evolving platform for llms’ value evaluation. Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.acl-demo.64
• Kim, H., Yi, X., Bak, J., Yao, J., Lian, J., Huang, M., Duan, S., & Xie, X. (2025). The Road to Artificial SuperIntelligence: A Comprehensive Survey of Superalignment. SuperIntelligence - Robotics - Safety & Alignment, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.70777/si.v2i1.13963
• Savalei, V., & Huang, M. (2025). Fit Indices Are Insensitive to Multiple Minor Violations of Perfect Simple Structure in Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Psychological Methods. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/met0000718
• Laurin, K., Engstrom, H., & Huang, M. (2024). What will my life be like when I’m 25? How social class predicts kids’ answers to this question, and how their answers predict their futures. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12650

Conference Presentations

^† first author / ^* solo

• Designing AI-Agents with Personalities: A Psychometric Approach
  • with X. Zhang: Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Convention, Montréal, Canada (Jun 2026)
  • with X. Zhang: International Society for Data Science and Analytics (ISDSA) Meeting, Beijing, China (Jul 2026, Speed Talk)
  •  *American Psychological Association (APA) Convention, Seattle, USA (Aug 2024, Poster)</sup>
• Improving the Measurement of the Big Five via Alternative Formats for the BFI-2
  • with X. Zhang: Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Convention, Montréal, Canada (Jun 2026)
  • with X. Zhang, J. Sun, V. Savalei: International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), Prague, Czech Republic (Jul 2025)
  • ^† with X. Zhang, V. Savalei: American Psychological Association (APA) Convention, Washington, DC (Aug 2023, Poster)
• ^† Beyond Anthropomorphism: Unveiling Unique Value Structure of Large Language Models (with P. Biedma, X. Yi, L. Huang, M. Sun, J. Evans, X. Xie)
  • 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Norrköping, Sweden (Jul 2025)
• ^† Re-Discovering the Big Five: Using LLM Embeddings to Understand Personality Structure (with N. Huang)
  • American Psychological Association (APA) Convention, Denver, USA (Aug 2025)
• Understanding Silicon Sampling through a Psychometric Lens (with C. F. Falk, X. Zhang, N. Guenole, W. Li)
  • Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Convention, Montréal, Canada (Jun 2026)
• Can SEM Fit Indices Distinguish Between CFA and EFA Data Structures? (with V. Savalei)
  • Annual Meeting of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP), Iowa City, Iowa (Oct 2023)
• Social Class Differences in Children’s Hopes and Expectations for the Future (with H. Engstrom, K. Laurin)
  • Society in the Classroom Symposium, London, England (Jul 2022, Talk)
  • Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention, San Francisco, CA (Feb 2022, Talk)
  • ^† Association for Psychological Science (APS) Annual Convention (May 2021, Poster)
• Gauging Student Engagement with an XAI Interface via Eye-tracking (with C. Conati, R. Murali)
  • IJCAI 2022 Workshop on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Jun 2022)

📖 Educations

💻 Internships

🎖 Honors and Awards