In this edition of our Day in the Life series, we follow Principal Researcher Jina Suh from Microsoft Research Redmond’s Inclusive Futures Team. From crisis management workshops to long-term strategy sessions, Jina is pioneering how AI can be designed with psychological safety and human wellbeing at the center.

My typical day varies drastically depending on the day of the week, if school is in season, or on what sports or after school activities my daughter happens to be doing. I do drop-off and pickup for my daughter and take the motherly feeding instinct to the extreme, so I’m constantly thinking about how I can coordinate early morning and afternoon meetings with food prep. So, this is a tricky question to answer, but let's look back at a summer day when my daughter was away at summer camp.

A Jina Thursday in July: AI crisis management day; [no school drop off]

My research focus is at the intersection of technology and mental health, where I examine the role of technology in improving human wellbeing. The current set of problems I am trying to solve are (1) understanding the space of potential psychological harms or risks that AI can introduce and (2) identifying ways that AI can be designed to maximize human potential/wellbeing. We are at the early stages of understanding a phenomenon that could unfold over decades and that could impact not just individuals but society. 

Success to me looks like the technology/AI industry recognizing their role in shaping and influencing people’s mental health, regardless of whether that technology is intentionally designed for mental health. 

When it comes to the intersection of mental health and technology, we tend to “medicalize” the issue. It’s easy for us to assume that if we consulted clinicians here and there, we’ll eventually figure it out, but the issue is quite nuanced; it requires all disciplines to engage. 

It’d be great if we could find one culprit for everything, but the issue is more nuanced and complicated. We can’t place the blame solely on technology for rising mental health issues because we then ignore the societal issue that is mental health care and the social determinants of mental health. We can’t fix the issue of mental health by regulating AI psychological safety alone or by pouring billions of investments into digital mental health solutions powered by AI. We need to have a holistic approach to the problem that challenges the traditional separation between strictly mental health focused technologies and everyday technologies. We need to have transdisciplinary dialogues. This perspective paper describes my approach.

The first set of questions I ask are: Why should I be doing this research at Microsoft? Why can’t an academic do it in their institutions? What is something that I can only uniquely do from Microsoft’s perspective? I try to choose research topics where Microsoft’s leadership is absolutely essential in pushing the world toward the right direction. For example, we need a big player like Microsoft to establish standards for how we manage AI human infrastructure (the global ecosystem of people hired as crowd workers and vendor workers that contribute to AI safety). We need a big player like Microsoft to establish psychological safety standards for how AI should be designed and used.

I show up for others by being intentional about creating spaces for others and making sure their needs are met. Time is the most important currency for me, and I make sure that I give others my undivided attention when they need it. 

Mentoring interns and students is a big part of my work and is a big priority for me. For interns, I start preparing for their arrival 4-6 months before they get here. 12 weeks is a short time and the intern’s time is very valuable. I make sure that the research topic is crystalized, barriers are identified ahead of time, and partners across the company can provide early input into the project direction. 

When I involve others, I try to provide my time and expertise to ensure that they are successful by being as involved as I can in their research project. My involvement varies from being a facilitator of multi-institution negotiations to weekly syncs on advising PhD students. 

Again, because of my “why at Microsoft” question, I make sure that the research problem I take has an actual product impact. It’s a balance between what I see as an important research question and what the product groups need to succeed in their own way. Nowadays, I have a 100% alignment with product groups. For example, the Microsoft AI team is very much interested in AI safety and making sure that the consumer Copilot successfully engages their users. The question about how to handle crises or how to measure dependency came directly from their needs. I also have a very close relationship with the AI red team, not just for topical alignment (i.e., AI safety) but also for my work around AI human infrastructure wellbeing. I show up for the AI red team when they need to figure out how to evaluate the psychological safety of AI systems and how to set up AI human infrastructure while ensuring worker safety.

Mary Czerwinski: I would not be a researcher had it not been for Mary who invested in me in both my career and my passion. I was still a Research Software Development Engineer (RSDE) when Mary took me under her wing. At the time, I had a huge appetite for doing research rather than development. Before coming to Mary’s team, I was beginning to rediscover my passion for research (I had dropped out of a Physics PhD program a long time ago) and I felt as though not having a PhD prevented me from being part of research discussions and agendas. Mary encouraged me to pursue a PhD at the University of Washington and supported me to do that while also working at MSR. I felt extremely guilty for asking for part-time accommodation during the first year when I had the highest course load. I remember telling Mary about this guilt. She told me that she was making an investment in me because she knows that Microsoft will reap the benefit of it in 5-6 years when I graduate. Mary treated me like a partner and a collaborator. She saw the value I brought to the research world as a developer, and I made sure that I was as productive as any other researcher. Mary pushed to have my title changed from RSDE to Researcher, even before I finished my PhD. Mary was also one that flamed the fire under me to go all in on mental health. Mary was a pioneer at Microsoft to lead research on emotional intelligence and mental health. And she created the space for me to prioritize and thrive in this work.

Everyone thinks AI will transform people’s lives by increasing productivity and affecting jobs. I think that’s true, but I believe psychological impacts will be the key. The real transformation is something we’re beginning to see and is yet to be seen in how people conceptualize the role of AI in their day-to-day lives, how psychological influences of AI change people’s motivations and behaviors, how that impacts the wellbeing of the society, how regulators react to that, how societal pressures influence AI industries into different products, and so forth. As much as we want to simplify AI as a tool, it’s become more than that – for some it's a listener, a friend, a therapist, an advisor. The psychological impact will vary from person to person, context to context, as we have seen from past technological advancements. The important thing to notice here is that we (Microsoft) get to nudge the direction of this impact. For example, our recent research on AI dependency is seeing that people are conceptualizing AI dependency as functional reliance, and this functional reliance is being imposed upon by society and external forces (e.g., work pressure to use AI). So, my simple answer to what role AI will play is what we shape the role to be.