National Grant Supports Human-AI Research

Published Date May 26, 2026
News Type College News

Ohio State John Glenn College of Public Affairs Assistant Professor Esra Gules-Guctas, who holds a joint appointment with the Translational Data Analytics Institute, centers her research around the intersections of law, technology and public policy, particularly in terms of algorithmic systems in public sector decision-making.

Assistant Professor Esra Gules-Guctas has received a Russell Sage Foundation Sheldon Danziger Pipeline Grant, awarded to emerging scholars to cultivate an academic pipeline of researchers from a broad range of backgrounds, experiences and institutions. 

She will use the $50,000 grant to test whether AI-generated fraud flags in unemployment insurance increase administrative burdens for applicants and whether the effects are larger for applicants who signal Black or Latino identity.

What Opportunities Does AI Bring to Public Service?

Read about Assistant Professor Esra Gules-Guctas’ expertise in embedding legal and policy decisions in ai implementation.

Her research summary for the grant explains that administrative burdens impede access to social safety net programs and disproportionately affect marginalized groups, reinforcing existing inequalities. 

Government agencies increasingly deploy algorithmic decision-support tools to streamline processes and improve uptake. Yet growing evidence suggests that these tools can produce disparate impact and may automate inequality.

What remains underexplored is how frontline staff interact with algorithmic outputs and whether cognitive biases in human-AI interaction translate into unequal, burden-creating choices. Gules-Guctas will conduct a pilot randomized factorial vignette experiment with staff in a state unemployment insurance agency to test whether algorithmic recommendations causally increase the likelihood that frontline staff impose burden-creating decisions and whether these effects are disproportionately larger for otherwise identical applicants who signal Black or Latino identity.

One of the oldest American foundations, the Russell Sage Foundation, was established by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, widow of railroad magnate and financier Russell Sage, in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” In its early years, the foundation undertook major projects in low-income housing, urban planning, social work and labor reform. The foundation now dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data and theories of the social sciences to diagnose social problems and improve social policies. It also funds researchers at other institutions and supports programs intended to develop new generations of social scientists.