Opening Keynote: David G. Rand - Empirical Defenses Against AI Manipulation
AI Manipulation Hackathon - Opening keynote
Building tools to mitigate AI Manipulation alongside 500+ builders globally.
The Talk
The threats from AI manipulation are accelerating. The defenses are lagging. But what does winning look like?
David G. Rand opens the AI Manipulation Hackathon with a talk to set the ambitious tone for the weekend.
Drawing from his Science paper on levers of political persuasion with conversational AI, David explores what real detection systems need, empirical grounding in how LLMs sway beliefs at scale. Not toy evals or speculation. Tools that measure and counter influence before it cascades.
He'll challenge builders to prototype defenses that actually work.
The Speaker
David G. Rand is a Professor at Cornell University in Information Science, Marketing, and Psychology. He studies belief correction via AI dialogues, misinformation, polarization, and cooperation using computational social science and behavioral experiments. Previously at Yale and MIT, he has 200+ papers in top journals like Nature and Science, advised Google and Meta, and won awards including Wired's Smart List.
Why this matters
Before you start building, grasp the endgame. This goes beyond spotting persuasion tricks or hackathon wins, it's crafting defenses that decide if AI influence empowers democracy or erodes it.
David will frame the full threat landscape and the massive opportunity to counter it empirically.
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