Department: Computer Science Faculty Adviser: Manoel Horta Ribeiro Year of Study: G2 Undergraduate School: EPFL Undergraduate Major: Computer Science + Physics
Hey there! I'm Francesco, and I come from a small town in the north of Italy. I'm a second-year PhD student in Computer Science, studying the societal impacts of AI. Before moving to Princeton, I received an MSc degree in Computational Science and Engineering at EPFL and a BSc degree in Physics at the University of Bologna. During my studies, I also spent some time as a Visiting Fellow at FBK and interning at Bain & Company and a startup called DemoSquare. Outside of work, I enjoy hiking, playing board games, and being a psephology geek: ask me about my favourite parliament building (If you'd like to chat and we don't get a chance to meet in-person, feel free to reach out to me at fsalvi@princeton.edu)
Two truths, one lie: - I have been an administrator of the Italian version of Wikipedia - I once got out of a robbery attempt in Sicily by pretending to be a remote cousin - I have lived and worked in 5 different countries
How persuasive are LLMs in shifting political beliefs or commercial purchases? What does ChatGPT remember about you, and how does that shape its answers? What is the impact of using AI on writing and learning? Can we develop AI-based interventions to fight political polarization online? What is the effect of generative propaganda on online communities? I work in Computational Social Science, an interdisciplinary field that uses big data and computational methods to understand humans, machines, and their complex relationships. My own research focuses on the societal impacts of AI, especially in reshaping human beliefs and behavior. To do that, I use a toolbox of methods ranging from experiments to observational studies and simulations. The key challenge in many of the questions I ask involves finding ways to answer why . You might have heard that correlation is not causation but do you know how to get to causality?
Interested in participating in Summer 2027 ReMatch+ program.
