Hi, I'm Elisa!
I do research in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Social Science (CSS), studying the impact of (generative) AI on society. My research examines how AI creates new forms of social disadvantage, while additionally reinforcing existing inequalities (see Technology Amplification Theory). I investigate how well AI technologies serve different social groups, whose needs, language use, and ways of interacting with AI may differ. My goal is to contribute to the development of more equitable and inclusive AI technologies.
I believe that socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest driver of inequality in society and there is evidence that it is now also shaping access to AI, patterns of AI engagement, and the benefits people derive from these technologies. For this reason, I advocate for greater attention to SES in the development of new technologies.
I also investigate how AI is changing individual behavior and our relationship with information. This includes studying overreliance on AI and the shift from traditional search engines and other information sources toward conversational AI.
Central questions driving my work include:
- Who adopts AI and why?
- Who's left out of the ''AI hype'' and why? Is it a deliberate choice or a matter of barrier (eg, phycal access, required skills, motivation, low performance)?
- How is AI changing the way people seek information, make decisions, and accomplish everyday tasks?
- What is the long-term effect of AI's widespread on individuals (eg, deskilling, cognitive effects)? And on society (eg, social stratification, social interactions)?
Before, I worked on Information Extraction. My PhD thesis was on cross-domain Relation Extraction: building systems that identify semantic relations between entities and generalize robustly across domains and unseen label spaces.
I am affiliated with the MilaNLP group at Bocconi University, working with Prof. Dirk Hovy. I am also affiliated with the NLP North group at the IT University of Copenhagen and the Pioneer Center for Artificial Intelligence, Denmark.
I completed my PhD at the IT University of Copenhagen, also affiliated with the MaiNLP lab at LMU Munich, supervised by Prof. Barbara Plank and Dr. Rob van der Goot.