Christopher Andrew Bail

Christopher Andrew Bail is a Professor of Sociology, Computer Science, Political Science, and Public Policy at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He directs the Society-Centered AI Initiative and co-founded the Polarization Lab. His research focuses on AI's impact on human behavior, particularly in social media contexts, aiming to mitigate political polarization and design prosocial digital platforms. Bail holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University (2011).

His expertise spans computational social science, online political discourse, and AI ethics. Notable contributions include groundbreaking work on social media's role in polarization, interventions to reduce partisan animosity, and the development of AI-driven dialogue platforms. He has authored influential books like Breaking the Social Media Prism, which led to policy changes at Twitter and inspired NextDoor's conflict mediation tools.

Recent publications emphasize AI's societal implications, experimental methods to improve online interactions, and consensus-based reforms in machine learning research. His work appears in Science, Nature, and the New York Times, among others. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship (2018) and Carnegie Fellowship (2017).

Bail's grants include funding from NSF, Templeton Foundation, and others for projects on ideological distance in social media, computational social science training, and AI for intellectual humility. He teaches advanced courses on AI in sociology and interdisciplinary data science. His media engagements span major outlets like CNN, BBC, and NPR, where he discusses digital polarization and tech policy.

He co-founded the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science and advises the NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. Current initiatives include the Trinity Social AI Initiative and Duke’s Interdisciplinary Data Science Program.