Thrilled to share that I am joining UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in the School of Information! I start in Fall 2027, and I am recruiting PhD students this cycle. List me in your application if you want to work with me! More on what I'm looking for (and a form to indicate interest) 🧵

Another excellent post (from @sayash.bsky.social and @randomwalker.bsky.social) on questions to ask about announcements of AI capabilities. I highly recommend their newsletter! www.normaltech.ai/p/did-google...

New from @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social: Responding to AI risks requires building broad resilience to harms through normal policymaking, rather than allowing the executive branch to exert extraordinary power over AI access and development. knightcolumbia.org/blog/do-ai-r...

New Trump EO is expected to "ask" AI cos to submit frontier models for agency review in advance of release. Here's a new essay--just published--by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social about whether AI risks require extraordinary government intervention. knightcolumbia.org/blog/do-ai-r...

A silly little comic based on the opening section of AI Snake Oil by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social.

Advanced AI will not automatically help consumers achieve desired legal outcomes at lower costs. Justin Curl, @sayash.bsky.social, & @randomwalker.bsky.social identify three bottlenecks that stand between AI capability advances and more accessible legal services in the latest Lawfare Research paper.

(1/4) Ever wondered what tech policy might look like if it were informed by research on collective intelligence and complex systems? 🧠🧑‍💻 Join @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @lukethorburn.com, and myself in San Diego on Aug 4th for the Collective Intelligence x Tech Policy workshop at @acmci.bsky.social!

New commentary in @nature.com from professor Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social) & PhD candidate Sayash Kapoor (@sayash.bsky.social) about the risks of rapid adoption of AI in science - read: "Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science" 🔗 #CITP #AI #science #AcademiaSky

In a new essay from our "Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms" series, @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social make the case for thinking of #AI as normal technology, instead of superintelligence. Read here: knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...

“The rush to adopt AI has consequences. As its use proliferates…some degree of caution and introspection is warranted.” In a comment for @nature.com, @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social warn against an overreliance on AI-driven modeling in science: bit.ly/4icM0hp

Science is not collection of findings. Progress happens through theories.As we move from findings to theories things r less amenable to automation. Proliferation of scientific findings based on AI hasn't accelerated—& might even have inhibited—higher levels of progress www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I spent a few hours with OpenAI's Operator automating expense reports. Most corporate jobs require filing expenses, so Operator could save *millions* of person-hours every year if it gets this right. Some insights on what worked, what broke, and why this matters for the future of agents 🧵

Excellent post discussing whether "AI progress is slowing down". www.aisnakeoil.com/p/is-ai-prog... And if you're not subscribed to @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social 's great newsletter, what are you waiting for?

Excited to share that AI Snake Oil is one of Nature's 10 best books of 2024! www.nature.com/articles/d41... The whole first chapter is available online: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... We hope you find it useful.

More than 60 countries held elections this year. Many researchers and journalists claimed AI misinformation would destabilize democracies. What impact did AI really have? We analyzed every instance of political AI use this year collected by WIRED. New essay w/@random_walker: 🧵

My wife noticed an article with my name on it in her feed and said “Did you write this? It doesn’t sound like you.” I was surprised to see an alarmist headline attributed to me and @sayash.bsky.social by Wired: “Human Misuse Will Make Artificial Intelligence More Dangerous”

Misinformation is not an AI problem. @sayash.bsky.social and @randomwalker.bsky.social highlight that "while generative AI reduces the cost of creating misinformation, it does not reduce the cost of distributing it". Always worth reading them. substack.com/app-link/pos...

Is artificial intelligence supercharging the problem of political misinformation? In a word: no. New from @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social at @knightcolumbia.org. knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-look...

“Fixes to the information environment depend on structural and institutional changes rather than on curbing AI-generated content.” @sayash.bsky.social & @randomwalker.bsky.social find that AI hasn’t "fundamentally changed the landscape of political misinformation”: knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-look...

AI amplifying biorisk has been a major focus in AI policy & governance work. Is the spotlight merited? Our recent cross-institutional work asks: Does the available evidence match the current level of attention? 📜 arxiv.org/abs/2412.01946

🚨 [AI BOOK CLUB] "AI Snake Oil: What AI Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference" by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social is a MUST-READ for everyone interested in AI, and it's our 🎉 15th selected book: 📖 About the book:

I have a new piece out with @aisvarya17.bsky.social in @columjournreview.bsky.social in which we test how OpenAI's new search feature surfaces and attributes news content. Our findings were not promising for news publishers (1/9) www.cjr.org/tow_center/h...

New short paper on the limits of one type of inference scaling, by @benediktstroebl.bsky.social @sayash.bsky.social & me. The first page has the main findings and message. (The title is a play on Inference Scaling Laws.) More on the limits of inference scaling coming soon. arxiv.org/abs/2411.17501

Current read. Very informative so far. Not quite in the way most folks I engage with would expect. I knew predictive AI was bad but I did not know just how bad it is. Or how much government and corporations use it and screw up lives in the process.

Don't leave the future of AI to the tech companies. The authors of AI Snake Oil cut through the hype of AI-bullshit. Not to neglect the good stuff but in order to make the reader aware of the (snake)pits of overselling the technology. @sayash.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-l... #skolechat

Another banger just picked up from my local library: @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social on "AI Snake Oil".

I have recently read the book "AI Snake Oil" by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social. Before buying it, I expected it to be the best book I'd read on AI, it most definitely is. I heartily endorse it to anyone wanting to find out what AI is all about and see what is real and what is hype

This book was surprisingly good! Excited to go to this.

Folks in San Francisco: my AI Snake Oil book talk is *today* at 5:30pm at Book Passage (SF ferry building). Come through to discuss the future of AI, why AI isn't an existential risk, how we can build AI in/for the public, and what goes into writing a book. Looking forward to seeing some of you!

This easily approachable book by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social should be compulsory reading for anyone implementing AI and automation. Especially everyone in the EU wishing to push full throttle on applying AI for everything and anything. www.aisnakeoil.com

Just finishing @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social's book AI Snake Oil. It's really good - clear eyed and thoughtful. Their chapter on content moderation is a must read for anyone engaging with social media, and vital user education for us all in the growth of a platform like this.

I learned much from this book on AI. - How to Identify Trustworthy / Overhyped AI Applications - How AI should (not) be regulated - The Reproducibility Crisis in AI Research - AI Research Culture Great work by @randomwalker.bsky.social , @sayash.bsky.social

(3) AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan @randomwalker.bsky.social & Sayash Kapoor @sayash.bsky.social. Building on a 2019 talk, a key takeaway for me was that AI snake oil is appealing because it's being marketed to broken institutions that are already overworked. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Going to do my part to try to build content on Bluesky by trying to post a paper I like every day. First is one of the best papers I’ve read in a while doing essential work in examining how we evaluate agents: arxiv.org/html/2407.01... From @sayash.bsky.social @randomwalker.bsky.social at Princeton

"It turns out that the algorithm is mostly just assessing need, that is, how long patients would survive without a transplant." this is a damming essay about UK's liver transplant matching algo www.aisnakeoil.com/p/does-the-u...

New essay in the AI Snake Oil newsletter with Angelina Wang, @sayash.bsky.social and Solon Barocas — we analyze the UK's liver transplant matching algorithm that's been reported to make it nearly impossible for patients under 45 to get a liver. www.aisnakeoil.com/p/does-the-u...

A bit over the moon to see The AI Mirror featured in The New Yorker today (alongside the good company of @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social)! www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

From two of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, AI Snake Oil by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social publishes on September 24. 🎉 Learn what #AI can do, what it can’t, & how to tell the difference. Preorder your copy of this important book today: princeton.press/gpl5al2h

I'm ecstatic to share that preorders are now open for the AI Snake Oil book! The book will be released on September 24, 2024. @randomwalker.bsky.social and I have been working on this for the past two years, and we can't wait to share it with the world. Preorder: princeton.press/gpl5al2h

Humans in the loop are not enough to fix algorithms. When push comes to shove, companies choose profits over people. The latest example: UnitedHealth forced employees to cut off care based on an algorithm's prediction. If they disagree, they're fired.

If you have been anywhere near AI discourse in the last few months, you might have heard that AI poses an existential threat to humanity. In today's Wall Street Journal, @randomwalker.bsky.social and I argue that claims of x-risk rest on a tower of fallacies (no paywall: archive.is/Jv60s)

A VentureBeat interview with @sayash.bsky.social and me about the AI Snake Oil book and Substack! venturebeat.com/ai/princeton... www.aisnakeoil.com

INMA included @knightcolumbia.org's paper "How to Prepare for the Deluge of Generative AI on Social Media," written by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social, on their AI reading list. https://www.inma.org/blogs/smart-data-initiative-newsletter/post.cfm/ai-reading-list-vacation-edition

If you're a journalist or news editor covering AI, please consider reading this. Thanks to Hilke for including me, Ari & @sayash.bsky.social for their work... https://www.cjr.org/analysis/how-to-report-better-on-artificial-intelligence.php