Every day, vast volumes of human conversation go underanalyzed: survey interviews, marketplace exchanges. These interactions hold critical insights. The question is whether we have the right tools to unlock them.

The Livings Standards Measurement Study – the World Bank Group’s flagship household survey program - in collaboration with the World Bank Group Community of Practice on Surveys and Measurement and the World Bank Data Academy, is hosting a BBL that brings together two research teams working at the frontier of large language models (LLMs) and human interaction data.

The first talk examines how generative AI can strengthen surveys and qualitative research, not by replacing human judgment, but by augmenting it across instrument design, adaptive interviewing, response coding, and qualitative synthesis. The second takes us into online labor marketplaces, where an LLM-based conversational analytics framework reveals a striking finding: how collaborators communicate predicts match success more powerfully than what they discuss.

Together, these talks offer a timely and practical look at what responsible human–AI collaboration can mean for research design, data quality, and the future of measurement. Join us!

Chair

 

Amparo Palacios-Lopez is Program Manager of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) at the World Bank, where she leads the Survey Methods Program. Her research spans survey methods, labor, poverty, informality, and agriculture.

 

Presenters

 

PK Kannan is Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He previously served as associate dean for strategic initiatives at the Smith School. His research focuses on marketing modeling, applying statistical, econometric, machine learning and AI methods to marketing data.

 

Liye Ma is Professor of Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He is an expert on AI/Machine Learning and Digital Marketing.His research explores the dynamic interactions of consumers and firms on internet, social media and mobile platforms.

 

Wedad Elmaghraby is Dean's Chair of Operations Management. Her research interests are at the interface of operations management, economics and behavioral decision-making. Wedad’s current research includes market design for sustainable business paradigms in operations and online auctions in B2B secondary markets, among other topics.

 

Jihannan Xu began the Smith PhD program in Fall 2021. His research interests include marketplace analytics, service operations, and applied machine learning. Jiannan currently serves as BMGT Student Representative with the Graduate School Government at the University of Maryland.