Cody Kommers
Hi, I'm Cody.
I'm originally from Seattle, WA. I currently live in London with my partner, Haily, and our dog, Zora. I've been in England since 2019 and have also lived in Los Angeles, Boston, and Brussels. I'm a cognitive scientist by training. I also write about psychological topics for a general audience. Before I wanted to be a cognitive scientist, I wanted to be a jazz musician.
My training is in computational cognitive science and social psychology. I'm interested in what AI and computational models can teach us about the human mind, and what our understanding of the human can teach us about how to build and deploy AI. I currently work as a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute. I am building a research program around using LLMs to model human meaning and social interaction in ways that couldn't be done using previous generations of computational modeling.
Cognitive Science of Meaning
My research uses methods from AI and computational modeling to understand how people think about their social world. I'm primarily interested in how recent advances in AI can help us model aspects of human behavior that had previously been difficult to model. These include questions about the perception of meaning and how we make inferences about others in complex social situations. I'm also interested in how an understanding of the mind can be applied to improve the deployment of technology for societal good.
Models of Meaning
How do people come to perceive something as meaningful?
Meaning has always been difficult to model. Models do well with numerical values, but people don't simply judge meaning on a scale from one to ten. They develop theories of what something means. Whether it's a story, an event, or a social action, this requires a process of interpretation. With new developments in large language models, we now have an entirely new means of modeling this process.
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Work currently underway with Wil Cunningham (Toronto) and Joel Leibo (DeepMind)
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Kommers, et al. (2015). Hierarchical reasoning with distributed vector representations.
In Proceedings of CogSci Society. PDF.
Models of Social Cognition
Applied Cognitive Science
How do we make inferences in complex social situations?
Previous approaches to understanding social cognition via multi-agent model imposed strict limits on the kinds of interactions that could be studied. With LLMs, we can look at a much broader set of complex social behavior. For example, how do people make inferences about another agent's world knowledge? We can now begin to model the ways we make sense not only of other people's situational belief states, but their underlying worldview as well.
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Kommers, Apps, & Bird (In Prep). A novel assessment of effort and accuracy in mental state inference.
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Kommers, Bird, & Apps. (In Prep). Prosocial motivation in an intergroup context: the role of social identity in willingness to help or harm.
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Gershman, Zhou, & Kommers (2017). Imaginative Reinforcement Learning: Computational principles and neural mechanisms. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
How can cognitive biases be used to deter adversarial actors?
As technology advances, so do the capabilities of adversarial actors such as cyber attackers. Usually these kind of adversarial attacks are deterred through technological defenses (e.g., fire walls). However, while such technology change quickly, the cognitive processes underlying adversarial behavior does not. My current applied work looks at how an understanding of cognitive biases and other psychological vulnerabilities can be used to defend against cyber attackers and other malicious digital behavior.
~ 2024 ~
Bad is Stronger than Good - Meaning Lab - on Baumeister et al. (2001)
~ 2023 ~
In the Land of Happiness - Meaning Lab - on visiting Bhutan
Wait! I think Michael Lewis is right - Meaning Lab - on his SBF book
Education
Ph.D., Experimental Psychology
2019 - 2022
University of Oxford (Jesus College)
Dissertation: Whom? The effect of target agent of motivation to help, hurt, or understand.
PIs: Matthew Apps, Geoff Bird
B.S., Cognitive Science
2011 - 2015
Univ. of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Honors Thesis: Computational models of jazz improvisation inspired by language.
PIs: Jesse Rissman, Alan Yuille
Experience
Applied Behavioural Scientist
2023 - Present
Social Machines Ltd
I currently work at an applied research firm which specializes in how to apply insights from basic research in real-world settings. One project I'm leading looks at how to use cognitive biases to deter cyber attackers. I'm also leading the company's effort in the AI space.
Lab Manager
2016 - 2018
Research Assistant
Spring 2016
Harvard University
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.
PI: Samuel Gershman.
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Consciousness, Cognition, & Computation Lab.
PI: Axel Cleeremans.
Research Assistant
Summer 2014
USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Cognitive Architecture & Artificial Intelligence Lab.
PI: Paul Rosenbloom.