Professor portrait: Luca Aiello wants to make the internet a better place
On 24 September 2025 at 14:30, Professor Luca Aiello will give his inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University in Copenhagen.
Luca Maria AielloAbout ITUProfessor portraitResearch
Written 15 September, 2025 11:09
Written by Mette Strange Mortensen
For four years Professor Luca Aiello has been working at the IT University of Copenhagen as a computational social scientist. His research is focused on trying to give a quantitative understanding of how society works for example how people organise themselves or how societies end up thriving or failing economically.
“Right now, I’m studying how language influences different outcomes, particularly in relation to collective action and coordination. We are exploring how language can be a powerful tool of persuasion, convincing people to make sacrifices for the greater good. Take the climate crisis, for example: real progress requires large fractions of the population to act together to experience tangible benefits. The choice of an individual to give up eating meat impacts the climate very little without a critical mass of people doing the same. What we have been working on is identifying, through online conversations and offline records of human interaction, whether certain form of persuasive language can actually nudge people toward cooperation and consensus, rather than fuelling the polarization we so often see on social media today,” says Luca Aiello on his current research.
Before coming to ITU, Luca Aiello was working in the industry. He was also doing research, but the goals of his research were driven by the companies he was working for, and not always for benefits of society. As a researcher at a university, he can now work in a way, that is more personally motivating.
“My motivation is to give people new tools that to slightly shift their daily habits in ways that can improve their lives and that of people around them. These small changes, when compounded, can have a huge impact on collective outcomes, shaping how we treat our neighbours, how we work, how we interact with technology, and even how we approach challenges like climate change, where small steps are crucial to start positive processes,” says Luca Aiello. “For example, if we can figure out how to engage a critical fraction of the population into simple forms of climate activism, we might reach a tipping point that can lead to important results in the fight against the climate emergency.”
He is now a professor at ITU, where he will give his inaugural lecture on 24 September at 14:30 in Auditorium 0.
“My inaugural lecture will be on how the Web and research on the Web has evolved in the past 15 years, especially with the rise of social media. I will recount the early optimistic outlook on the social Web being a cradle of cooperation and creativity, and the rapid shift towards today's Web, which has become a complex bundle of social processes that is mostly seen as having negative impacts on society. I want to propose ways in which we can regain a positive momentum on the Web, that is currently suffering from its initial design flaws and lately by the spread of AI,” says Luca Aiello.
Inspiring future generations
Luca Aiello’s research looks towards the future in many ways. He enjoys inspiring students and young researchers and give them tools to go out and make a difference in the world.
“I really enjoy working with young students and researchers, because it's an opportunity to make a real difference by sharing my passion and showing how important research is for society. Here at ITU, I'm surrounded by bright, talented students with creative ideas on how to improve our societies. Guiding them not only opens new opportunities for their own career but also empowers them to make an impact in the world. Collaborating with students and young researchers has definitely been one of the most rewarding parts of my transition from industry to academia,” says Luca Aiello.
In his next project, he will also look into the future. Specifically, the web powered by generative AI.
“The Web of the next generation will be composed of AI agents that will communicate with one another autonomously. The implications and effects of this hybrid society are still largely unknown. I see a concrete risk of creating this new AI-powered society in the same way we approached the social Web, with a very enthusiastic and uncritical mindset, thinking this is all fantastic. We are proceeding at full speed into deploying AI everywhere, but by doing that might have consequences that are much more catastrophic than the design flaws of the social Web. Understanding those consequences from the quantitative perspective is something I will explore in the future,” says Luca Aiello.
Watch Professor Luca Aiello's entire inaugural lecture here:
Theis Duelund Jensen, Press Officer, phone +45 2555 0447, email thej@itu.dk