Our second scholar in the series is Sunny Rai, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from University of Delhi.

Her research focuses on misinformation, mental health and cross-cultural variations in human language. We spoke about her co-authored job market paper titled, Social Norms in Cinema: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Shame, Pride and Prejudice. We talked about depictions of shame and pride and heroism in Indian versus American films, the challenges with textual analysis of a visual medium, and much more.

Recorded September 5th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:44) - Shame and Pride in Film

(00:12:31) - Teaching Machines Norms

(00:16:52) - Textual Analysis in a Visual Medium

(00:18:26) - The Trouble with Subtitles and Scripts

(00:27:41) - Self-Shaming vs. Other-Shaming

(00:30:33) - LLM Alignment Needs a Culture Check

(00:36:20) - Looking Ahead: A Final Reflection

(00:37:01) - Outro