Conversations on the future of computing: can large language models (LLMs) help us model human choices?

About

University of Michigan Civil and Environmental Engineering Chair Yafeng Yin explores behavioral modeling for civil infrastructure systems in this presentation.

People’s choices shape both their experiences with civil infrastructure and system performance, making behavioral modeling important for design and operation. Yet collecting human choice data can be costly. Using travel behavior studies, this talk examines the capabilities and limitations of LLMs as behavioral simulators, including alignment with human data. Dr. Yin will present two approaches to augmenting limited human data for choice model estimation: correcting LLM responses under uncertainty and transferring utility structure while accounting for discrepancies. The central message is that useful LLM augmentation requires explicit discrepancy modeling and validation against human evidence.

Speaker bio: Dr. Yin is the Donald Cleveland Collegiate Professor of Engineering and the Donald Malloure Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research examines the interactions among travelers, infrastructure and mobility services, with the goal of improving the design, operation and regulation of transportation systems. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals and served as editor-in-chief of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies from 2014 to 2020. He currently serves as an area editor for Transportation Science and an associate editor for Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, and co-editor-chief for the newly launched journal Artificial Intelligence for Transportation.

Dr. Yin’s work has received multiple honors, including the Frank M. Masters Transportation Engineering Award from American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Monroe-Brown Foundation Education Excellence Award from Michigan Engineering, the Doctoral Mentoring Award from the University of Florida and the Outstanding Leadership Award from the Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA). He also has received several best paper awards from the Transportation Research Board, including the Stella Dafermos, Ryuichi Kitamura and Kikuchi-Karlaftis awards. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2002, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Tsinghua University in 1996 and 1994, respectively.