Large Language Models
Lecture Slides Lecture Slides (pdf) Lecture Slides (ipynb)
Tutorial Exercise Tutorial Exercise (pdf) Tutorial Exercise (ipynb)
This week we will discuss the use of large language models (LLMs) in social sciences and their implications for text analysis and research broadly.
Required Readings
- Bisbee, James, and Arthur Spirling. 2026. “What to Do When Humans Are No Longer the Gold Standard: Large Language Models, State of the Art and Robustness for Politics Research.” Working Paper. https://github.com/ArthurSpirling/futureProofR/blob/main/Bisbee_Spirling_human_gold_standard_2_10_2026.pdf
- Huang, Saffron, Shan Carter, Jake Eaton, Sarah Pollack, Dexter Callender III, Nikki Makagiansar, Maria Gonzalez, et al. 2026. “What 81,000 People Want from AI.” March 18, 2026. https://anthropic.com/features/81k-interviews.
Additional Readings
- Jurafsky and Martin 2026 Ch 7 Large Language Models
- Benoit, Kenneth, Scott De Marchi, Conor Laver, Michael Laver, and Jinshuai Ma. 2026. “Using Large Language Models to Analyze Political Texts through Natural Language Understanding.” American Journal of Political Science, Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.70050
Tutorial
- Designing studies with LLMs