In this course, students will be introduced to the rapidly growing scientific study of the psychology of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and have the opportunity to become producers of AI Psychology research. Given their popularity, the course will focus primarily on one type of AI: Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The course will proceed through three sections.

In the first section of the course, students will survey the literature on the capabilities of LLMs – what they’re good at, what they’re bad at, and how LLM performance is empirically evaluated via psychological benchmarks. In the second section of the course, students will be introduced to AI tools that can be used to augment their own research skills. Then, in the final section of the course, students will explore the literature on how humans think about and interact with AI in their daily lives, and how this can be experimentally investigated. The course will primarily cover AI-relevant studies within the domain of cognitive psychology.

Throughout the course, students will also participate in labs designed to teach specific research skills that are necessary to become producers of AI Psychology research. Students will also have the opportunity to design and run a research study in which they leverage AI to better understand a research area of interest to them.