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Researchers

Robb Willer

Professor of Sociology, Stanford University
Signed the letter · Academia · United States

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Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in psychology and organizational behavior. Directs the Politics and Social Change Lab and the AI for Public Benefit Lab, and co-directs the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. PhD from Cornell University (2006). His research examines American political attitudes, polarization, persuasion, and cooperation, including 'LLM-generated messages can persuade humans on policy issues' (Nature Communications, 2025) and, with Matthew Feinberg, 'From Gulf to Bridge: When Do Moral Arguments Facilitate Political Influence?', part of a line of work on moral reframing in political persuasion. Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter.

AI-written Documented facts only, from the sources below.

13 works in the co-authorship map · 3,789 citations across them

Sources

  1. About | Robb Willer (Politics and Social Change Lab, AI for Public Benefit Lab, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society)
  2. Robb Willer | Stanford Department of Sociology (professor of sociology, courtesy appointments, Cornell PhD 2006)
  3. LLM-generated messages can persuade humans on policy issues
  4. From Gulf to Bridge
  5. “Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter” — source

In the network

5 co-authors on the map · PageRank #29 of 400 · bridge #113 of 400 · 3 steps from Erik Brynjolfsson · cluster: Persuasion and moral attitudes.

Measured on this map only, which grows out of the letter's signatories; what these numbers mean. See Robb Willer on the map

Documented positions

Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Will AI widen inequality? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Should governments act on AI now? leans agree

His experiments find that LLM-generated messages can shift people's policy attitudes, and he has said this raises high-stakes questions for lawmakers that should be addressed early; his stated position concerns AI in political persuasion rather than AI regulation generally.

Evidence

  1. LLM-generated messages can persuade humans on policy issues
  2. “AI has the potential to influence political discourse, and we should get out in front of these issues from the start.” — source

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

How fast will the impact arrive? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Selected work

Writes with

Matthew Feinberg (5), Jan G. Voelkel (4), Hui Bai (3), Johannes C. Eichstaedt (3), Sharad Goel (1)

Co-authors on the map, by papers written together (5 of 5 shown).

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