Overview
Dr. Jana Schaich Borg uses neuroscience, computational modeling, and emerging technologies to study how we make social decisions that influence, or that are influenced by, other people. As a neuroscientist, she employs neuroimaging, ECOG, simultaneous electrophysiological recordings in rats, and computational analysis of video interactions to gain insight into how we make social decisions. As a data scientist, she works on interdisciplinary teams to develop new statistical approaches to analyze these high-dimensional multi-modal data to uncover principles of how the brain integrates complex social information with internal representations of value to motivate social actions.
Dr. Schaich Borg’s most current research projects focus on developing Moral Artificial Intelligences and understanding the role of “social synchrony” in empathy, social connection, psychiatric disease, and mental health. Issues related to these research projects have led her become involved in efforts to develop practical strategies for ethical AI development, and passionate about initiatives to use storytelling and data visualization to communicate the impact of complex analytical problems to diverse audiences.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Can AI Model the Complexities of Human Moral Decision-making? A Qualitative Study of Kidney Allocation Decisions
Conference Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings · April 26, 2025 A growing body of work in Ethical AI attempts to capture human moral judgments through simple computational models. The key question we address in this work is whether such simple AI models capture the critical nuances of moral decision-making by focusing ... Full text CiteShould responsibility affect who gets a kidney?
Chapter · April 30, 2024 Full text CiteThe AI field needs translational Ethical AI research
Journal Article AI Magazine · September 1, 2022 Calls for Ethical AI have become urgent and pervasive, especially as ethical issues surrounding AI products at tech companies are increasingly scrutinized by the public. Yet even after a first wave of responses to these calls coalesced around Ethical AI pr ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Making Moral AI
ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by OpenAI LP · 2022 - 2026NSF - IGE: Enhancing Data Skills and Professional Readiness through Vertically-Integrated Interdisciplinary Data Science Capstone Projects
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2018 - 2023View All Grants