The Cube: UChicago Launches Center to Study AI as Social Architecture

Many universities use artificial intelligence to study human minds and society. The University of Chicago now has a center that explores both that, and also AI societies and minds.

The Chicago Center for Computational Social Science (C3S2), nicknamed The Cube, launched this week as the University’s hub for research, education, and engagement at the intersection of computation and human behavior. The center unites scholars from economics, sociology, public policy, neurobiology, and computer and data sciences under a single mission: to ensure social scientists shape the digital age rather than merely react to it.

What sets The Cube apart is its approach. Researchers will use computational tools to study human society. But they will also examine computation—particularly AI—as a social phenomenon in its own right, a framing that is moving to the forefront as AI becomes less a tool and more an architecture that organizes how people live, work, and think.

“C3S2 is focused on the horizon of how emerging computational intelligences are opening up the social and cultural world for novel understanding,” says James Evans, the Max Palevsky Professor and C3S2 Faculty Co-Director. The center, he adds, is “probing and improving the ‘societies inside’ complex models driving the AI revolution.”

The center draws faculty from across UChicago, including the Division of the Social Sciences, Biological Sciences Division, Chicago Booth, the Harris School of Public Policy, and the Physical Sciences Division. Other programs, labs, and initiatives—including the Environmental Neuroscience Lab, the Institute for Mind and Biology, the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, and the Knowledge Lab—are involved as well.

“Establishing C3S2 reflects the legacy of the social sciences at the University of Chicago. As generations of scholars have done since our founding, faculty and students shape and define fields by conducting research across disciplines and with varied methods. The work of C3S2 will continue those accomplishments in this emerging and rapidly evolving area,” says Amanda Woodward, Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences and William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor.

The Cube will consolidate several existing computational social science programs: a master’s degree (MACSS), a doctoral certificate, an undergraduate minor, and a longstanding workshop series. It will also absorb the educational functions of the Center for Spatial Data Science. Under the new umbrella, these pieces will gain a unified identity and room to grow through seed grants, expanded summer institutes, and flagship courses on AI methods for graduate and undergraduate students alike.

“We want our students to learn not only foundational techniques, but what state-of-the-art is, especially in a realm where that art is quickly evolving,” says Jean Clipperton, associate director of MACSS and associate senior instructional professor. “The Cube will act as an incubator and gathering point for ideas and research.”

The Cube officially launched at an AI Initiative event on Thursday, February 12, 2026. An executive director will be named this year.

The goal, in Clipperton’s words: to ground the next generation “in interdisciplinary approaches and techniques” while technical expertise, theoretical depth, and ethical reflection converge to make sense of a world reshaped by machines.

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