Michiel Anton Bakker

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Michiel Anton Bakker

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Michiel Bakker is the Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor in Contemporary Technology, an AI safety researcher and computational social scientist focusing on AI alignment, societal impacts of AI, and AI’s role in human-human and human-computer interaction.

He is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and affiliated with MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems & Society and the MIT Center for Constructive Communication based at the MIT Media Lab. Michiel is also a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. He holds a Master’s and PhD degree in computer science from MIT, and a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in physics from Delft University of Technology.

Publications

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"Statistical Discrimination in Learning Agents."

Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A., Kevin R. McKee, Yiran Mao, Ben Coppin, Silvia Chiappa, Alexander Sasha Vezhnevets, Michiel A. Bakker, Yoram Bachrach, Suzanne Sadedin, William Isaac, Karl Tuyls, and Joel Z. Leibo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Forthcoming. arXiv Preprint.

"AI Can Help Humans Find Common Ground in Democratic Deliberation."

Tessler, Michael Henry, Michiel A. Bakker, Daniel Jarrett, Hannah Sheahan, Martin J. Chadwick, Raphael Koster, Georgina Evans, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Tantum Collins, David C. Parkes, Matthew Botvinick, and Christopher Summerfield. Science Vol. 386, No. 6719 (2024): eadq2852.

"How Large Language Models Can Reshape Collective Intelligence."

Burton, Jason W., Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez, Shahar Hechtlinger, Zoe Rahwan, Samuel Aeschbach, Michiel A. Bakker, et al. Nature Human Behaviour Vol. 8, (2024): 1643-1655.

"Scaffolding Cooperation in Human Groups with Deep Reinforcement Learning."

McKee, Kevin R., Andrea Tacchetti, Michiel A. Bakker, Jan Balaguer, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Richard Everett, and Matthew Botvinick. Nature Human Behavior Vol. 10, (2023): 1787-1796.

"Fine-tuning Language Models to Find Agreement Among Humans with Diverse Preferences."

Michiel A. Bakker, Martin J. Chadwick, Hannah R. Sheahan, Michael Henry Tessler, Lucy Campbell-Gillingham, Jan Balaguer, Nat McAleese, Amelia Glaese, John Aslanides, Matthew M. Botvinick, and Christopher Summerfield. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, New Orleans, LA: November 2022.

"Quantifying the Importance and Location of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Events in Large Metropolitan Areas."

Aleta, Alberto, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A. Bakker, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, and Esteban Moro. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 119, No. 26 (2022): e211218211.

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Recent Insights

Action Learning

Space, robots, and a new AI frontier

Accenture is a global leader in professional services, with over 700,000 employees and clients across 120 countries. Renowned for its work in strategy, technology, and digital transformation, the firm has recently expanded into the robotics and space technology sectors. As they explore how to use AI to accelerate new products and businesses in these areas, they’re continuing to work with MIT—this past spring, with two teams of students in MIT’s first ever Generative AI (GenAI) Lab course.

Aug 20, 2025
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Action Learning

Generative AI to advance human rights

The International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) is a human rights advocacy organization that equips those most harmed by systemic inequity with the necessary tools to drive systemic change. ICAAD empowers marginalized communities by building their capacity, strengthening their resilience, and fostering innovation. Working with MIT Sloan’s first cohort of Generative AI Lab (GenAI-Lab) students, ICAAD is accelerating its groundbreaking work, helping communities and governments improve the lives of those who need it most.

Aug 11, 2025
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Media Highlights

Press Financial Times

Sustainable thinking: Research aligned with green goals

A paper, co-authored by assistant professor Michiel Bakker, described efforts to train a large language model as an AI mediator to help small groups in the UK find common ground while discussing divisive political issues such as Brexit, immigration, the minimum wage, climate change, and universal childcare. The paper was rated highly for sustainable development goals (SDG).

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