嘉  宾：卢英达 Associate Professor University of Illinois Chicago

主持人：韩雪雯 助理教授 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时  间：2026年6月5日（周五）10:00-11:30

地  点：上海交通大学徐汇校区安泰楼A407

内容简介:
The integration of generative AI (Gen-AI) into social platforms is fundamentally reshaping how users discover information and interact online. This study examines an emerging class of platform native generative systems we term Socially Embedded LLMs (SELs), which draw on real-time user content to synthesize contextual responses and route user attention back into the platform‘s social graph. We analyze the release of Grok on X.com, introduced to non-premium users in New Zealand in November 2024, but not elsewhere. Exploiting this release, we employ a difference-in-differences (DID) design using Australia as the control group. Results show that Grok increases engagement with others‘ posts (favorites, replies, and reposts) by lowering discovery barriers and providing interaction-ready entry points to real-time content. These effects are most pronounced for low-popularity topics, suggesting that SELs can revitalize the “long-tail” of discussions. Mechanism analyses further suggest that Grok enhances engagement, in part, by increasing participant and topic diversity, thereby attracting broader audiences and fostering conversations across topical clusters. These findings provide early causal evidence that, when designed with embedded social entry points, SELs function as facilitators rather than information substitutes, highlighting their potential to rebalance attention and strengthen the resilience of social media ecosystems.

演讲人简介：
Yingda Lu is an associate professor at College of Business Administration, University of Illinois, Chicago. He obtained his PhD in Information Systems in Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. His research leverages economic theory with state-of-the art empirical methods to provide actionable policies to improve the design of social media platforms and the use of AI. His research appears in top academic journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, as well as top conferences such as International Conference on Information Systems.

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