Michal Kosinski at the GMF 2017

Studying and finding out about the correlation between virtual activity and personality is one of his works. As a psychologist and data scientist, Kosinski’s research focuses on studying humans based on their activities while using digital devices. He states that we are leaving an enormous amount of digital footprints behind while using online platforms on a regular basis. Furthermore, social media tracks not only the information we consume but also records the messages we have never sent. These physiological states recorded during our virtual routines help the online platforms optimize their service as well as user’s experience, but on the other hand, they reveal so much detail about the users that they violate their privacy. This is the condition that he defines as ‘the end of privacy’.

Kosinski also manages the myPersonality project, a global collaboration of a great number of researchers that work on the analysis of psycho-demographic profiles of millions of Facebook users. He previously was the Deputy Director of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre and a post-doc at Stanford’s Computer Science Department. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business.