Human-Centered AI Intern: Human-Computer Interaction

Toyota Research Institute • Los Altos, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life by developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. We have built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences. This is a paid 12-week internship opportunity and is a hybrid, in-office role. We welcome applicants from fields such as human-computer interaction, computer sciences, affective computing, social sciences, organizational behavior, sociology, behavioral economics, human factors, or related disciplines, provided they have strong methodological training and interest in collective wellbeing. This internship falls within the Harmonious Communities Department in the Human-Centered AI Division (HCAI). Our research aims to understand, simulate, and shape wellbeing in complex, real-world systems, including workplaces, communities, and organizations. We study how wellbeing emerges, is distributed, and changes over time across groups, and how organizational structures, technologies, and policies can support collective outcomes now and into the future. The team is an integrated group of behavioral scientists, machine-learning researchers, and human-computer interaction experts, leveraging real-world use cases to push the state-of-the-art in disciplinary thinking. We are looking for a Human-Computer Interaction (or similar) intern to investigate how organizations produce, distribute, and manage the emotional labor of difficult workplace conversations, and what the informal adoption of AI tools in this space reveals about systemic gaps in organizational support structures. This project, situated within our conversational AI research initiative, engages foundational questions at the intersection of organizational behavior, sociotechnical systems, and AI. The project will involve conceptual work, quantitative and/or qualitative analysis, and system design, with an emphasis on multilevel thinking. Research terrains guiding the work include: Informal AI adoption and organizational gaps, Organizational production of emotional labor, Informal peer learning networks, and Typology of difficult conversations. The strongest candidates will be generalists and flexible problem solvers, excited to build prototype solutions and take on high-risk, high-reward challenges outside of the traditional academic research setting. Over the course of the project, interns will participate in Harmonious Communities group meetings, all Human-Centered AI Division meetings, and broader TRI events, gaining exposure to interdisciplinary industrial research and learning from the team and other interns. Interns will also engage in strategy discussions about how their research connects to business impact at Toyota.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled in a PhD degree program.
• Track record of implementing research projects from start to finish.
• Demonstrated experience with prototype design, as well as mixed-methods research design and analyses.
• Familiarity with messy, real-world data, and evidence of critical, creative thinking about how this impacts study design and insights.
• Ability to reason across multiple levels of analysis and translate research insights into implications for organizational decision-making.
• Desire to work on challenging, open-ended research projects.
• Desire to be part of a highly interdisciplinary team and understanding of how this will improve your work.
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously while proactively soliciting feedback.
• Interest in wellbeing, organizational behavior, emotional labor, and/or the future of work.
• Please add links to Google Scholar, GitHub, etc., and include a full list of publications and presentations when submitting your CV.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in Future-of-Work research or organizational behavior.

Responsibilities

• Scope a research project aligned with Harmonious Communities’ HCI, Conversational AI, and Organizational Behavior research agenda.
• Evaluate an existing conversational AI platform and, where gaps are identified, design and prototype alternative or supplementary solutions.
• Drive the end-to-end research plan, with regular feedback from your mentor and teammates.
• Develop a taxonomy for understanding the factors shaping “difficulty†in workplace conversations.
• Present findings in research meetings to the Harmonious Communities Department, the HCAI Division, TRI leadership, and Toyota business group partners.
• Produce work that informs internal strategy and is aimed at publication in an academic journal or conference.

Benefits

• medical insurance
• dental insurance
• vision insurance
• paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time)

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees