Andrea Baronchelli
@baronca.bsky.social
📤 1510
📥 77
📝 82
Decentralised networks of humans and machines
https://www.andreabaronchelli.com/
pinned post!
New paper alert. "More is different" & the LLMs. LLMs are usually studied in isolation. But what happens when they start interacting? We explored this by looking at their collective behaviour. Work with
@ariel-flint.bsky.social
and
@lajello.bsky.social
1/
about 1 year ago
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AI language does not only raise the question of truth and lies. It also raises the question of what happens when belonging can be simulated. I’ve written about it in Substack.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
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The problem of artificial belonging
AI language is not only a problem of truth and lies. It is also a problem of belonging.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-197194454
7 days ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Justin Hendrix
7 days ago
“It’s a massive data pipeline: phone metadata, location pings, SIM card swaps, app usage, social media behavior, sometimes even banking or facial recognition inputs. A lot is ‘scraped’ from commercial platforms, mobile networks, partner intelligence agencies, or spies on the ground..."
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Inside Israel’s AI targeting system: How cellphone data becomes a death sentence | The Jerusalem Post
Ahmad Turmus got in his car, started it up, and drove off. Less than 30 seconds later came the shriek of the two missiles that lanced through his car.
https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-895697
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Andrea Baronchelli
Alain Barrat
26 days ago
Interdisciplinary PhD offer in Marseille, starting Oct. 2026, on "Collective Problem Solving in Guinea Baboons: From Dyadic Interactions to Group Dynamics" Project description and application website:
emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Docto...
DM for more info on the position
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Portail Emploi CNRS - Job offer - Collective Problem Solving in Guinea Baboons: From Dyadic Interactions to Group Dynamics (M/F)
https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR7077-NICCLA-001/Default.aspx?lang=EN
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Andrea Baronchelli
Luca Maria Aiello
about 1 month ago
Thrilled to announce CS2Nordics: the First Nordic Conference on Computational Social Science. Copenhagen, September 21-22, 2026. We invite all CSS researchers in the Nordics as well as in the international research community to submit 2-page abstracts by June 19:
nosocss.org/conference.h...
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New preprint out
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Scoiattolo
about 2 months ago
Interesting paper on the impact of blocklists on the Bluesky social graph. Self-recommending. (will read it again after coffee and likely have more to say then)
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City Research Online - Open or Blocked Skies? Community Moderation Practices in Bluesky
https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/36822/
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Andrea Baronchelli
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
3 months ago
Keep pushing & don't forget the bigger picture :)
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Andrea Baronchelli
Marijn Keijzer
3 months ago
Travel grants 📣 For the 13th Toulouse Economics & Biology Workshop (June 1–2, 2026, @IAST) we have travel fellowships for PhDs & early-career researchers presenting a poster. Apply by Feb 27! Details:
www.iast.fr/conferences/...
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Andrea Baronchelli
Astral
3 months ago
Science Advances: LLM populations develop social conventions through decentralized interactions alone. Most striking: collective biases emerge even when individual agents show NO bias. Group dynamics create preferences no single agent has.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu9368
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Andrea Baronchelli
Nicholas A. Christakis
3 months ago
This is a good metaphor for science.
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At Stanford Feb 4–6 (GSB talk on the 4th). Around to chat about AI swarms, norms, collective alignment, and governance risks in multi-agent systems incl social media and blockchain. Ping or DM me.
4 months ago
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Our new collective effort highlights what happens when AI acts in populations rather than as isolated tool. TL;DR: a lot.
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Timothy Caulfield
4 months ago
Tremendously important work...👇 How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
@daniel-thilo.bsky.social
@kunstjonas.bsky.social
et al. AI swarms are can be used to engineering a "synthetic consensus" that can manipulate public opinion and perceptions.
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Andrea Baronchelli
Ciro Cattuto
4 months ago
Long overdue refresh of the SocioPatterns website! ✨
sociopatterns.org
New content & datasets, and a chance to celebrate 17+ years of collabs, ~100 publications, 2000+ studies using our data. Thanks – more ahead!
@alainbarrat.bsky.social
@wouter-vdb.bsky.social
@foolsdelight.bsky.social
@isi.it
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👇
add a skeleton here at some point
4 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Ronaldo Menezes 🦋
5 months ago
Happy to be hosting
@baronca.bsky.social
and Johan Bollen here this week at the
@exeter.ac.uk
@exetercompsci.bsky.social
. After a work day, we had a chance to go for a drink and dinner with them (w/
@diogofpacheco.bsky.social
)
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Andrea Baronchelli
Santo Fortunato
6 months ago
Our review on multilayer network science is out on the arXiv. Thanks to all collaborators of the AccelNet MultiNet project, great working with you all 🙏
@alexvespi.bsky.social
@ymoreno.bsky.social
@lordgrilo.bsky.social
@anduviera.bsky.social
@baronca.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2511.23371
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Multilayer network science: theory, methods, and applications
Multilayer network science has emerged as a central framework for analysing interconnected and interdependent complex systems. Its relevance has grown substantially with the increasing availability of...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.23371
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Andrea Baronchelli
New preprint: More is different for AI multi-agent systems - but what does more mean?
arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422
With
@ariel-flint.bsky.social
,
@lajello.bsky.social
and Romualdo Pastor-Satorras.
7 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Tiago Peixoto
6 months ago
Nowadays, often the justification for choosing M$ is that it claims to be GDPR compliant, which just means that M$ can afford getting sued for any breach, which of course happens all the time. And universities don't care about potential breaches themselves, only about liability, which M$ absorbs.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Andrea Baronchelli
NetScience
7 months ago
Group size effects and collective misalignment in LLM multi-agent systems
arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422
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Group size effects and collective misalignment in LLM multi-agent systems
Multi-agent systems of large language models (LLMs) are rapidly expanding across domains, introducing dynamics not captured by single-agent evaluations. Yet, existing work has mostly contrasted the be...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422
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New preprint: More is different for AI multi-agent systems - but what does more mean?
arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422
With
@ariel-flint.bsky.social
,
@lajello.bsky.social
and Romualdo Pastor-Satorras.
7 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Aaron Clauset
7 months ago
Not being an AI-doomer, but having experienced in my own department over the past 7 years a steady erosion of faculty governance norms and diminished prioritization of research-oriented pedagogy, this tracks. Let faculty and faculty interests lead the way, rather than administrators/regents
add a skeleton here at some point
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Andrea Baronchelli
Walter Quattrociocchi
7 months ago
“LLMs don’t understand.” Of course. That was never the point. The point is: we’re already using them as if they do — to moderate, to classify, to prioritize, to decide. That’s not a model problem. It’s a systemic one. The shift from verification to plausibility is real. Welcome to Epistemia.
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Andrea Baronchelli
Rob Noble
7 months ago
'I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own "bunker", who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking.'
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Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we be worried?
The debate is ramping up about what happens if - or when - computer intelligence overtakes humans
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly17834524o
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Andrea Baronchelli
Fil Menczer
7 months ago
Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran
cyberscoop.com/citizen-lab-...
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Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran
The group leveraged dozens of social media accounts and “routinely used” AI-generated imagery and video to stoke unrest among Iran’s population, according to Citizen Lab.
https://cyberscoop.com/citizen-lab-disinformation-campaign-israel-iran-evin-prison/
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Andrea Baronchelli
Sune Lehmann
8 months ago
It was a ton of fun to play a small role in this project lead by the brilliant Marta Ewa Lech &
@jonassjuul.bsky.social
. A lot of drama & change in the world of music reflected in the song-dynamics of the Billboard Hot 100!
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There are two ways to deal with LLMs in our work One is the path of abundance: automate everything and multiply publications at the expense of quality The other is the path of focusing on the soul of the work, on the questions that still matter - to you - when everything else has been made trivial
9 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Heather Burns
9 months ago
Breaking: the court ruling in Wikipedia's legal challenge to the Online Safety Act categorisation regime has just been handed down. The court dismissed Wikipedia's challenge. This is bad. This is very bad.
wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/08...
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Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations – Wikimedia Foundation
UPDATE: On Monday, 11 August, the High Court of Justice dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. While the decision does not provi...
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/08/11/wikimedia-foundation-challenges-uk-online-safety-act-regulations/
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Andrea Baronchelli
Arianna Pera
10 months ago
Presented our work, “Cultural and Cognitive Insights from 2.6 Billion Drawings,” at
@ic2s2.bsky.social
this morning. Big thanks to Mauro Martino, Nima Dehmamy,
@douglasguilbeault.bsky.social
,
@lajello.bsky.social
, and
@baronca.bsky.social
for the collaboration ✨ Stay tuned for more results!
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Looking forward to it!
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10 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Gianmarco De Francisci Morales
11 months ago
🚨Are moral judgements biased by the gender of the subject? We find *no* direct effect when looking at Reddit! Our causal study design is based on carefully matching similar situations that people with different genders experience (and share). Study led by
@loreb92.bsky.social
rdcu.be/eumlQ
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Moral judgments in online discourse are not biased by gender
Scientific Reports - Moral judgments in online discourse are not biased by gender
https://rdcu.be/eumlQ
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Andrea Baronchelli
Nicholas A. Christakis
12 months ago
Our preprint “How Malicious AI Swarms Can Threaten Democracy” is now online. We show how coordinated multi-agent LLM swarms can infiltrate communities, craft synthetic grassroots “consensus,” and erode institutional trust—and what we can do now to stop it.
osf.io/preprints/os...
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OSF
https://osf.io/preprints/osf/qm9yk_v1
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Andrea Baronchelli
Dr Abeba Birhane
11 months ago
New paper hot off the press
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/
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Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology - Nature
An analysis of research papers and citing patents indicates the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08972-6#MOESM1
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At
#ICWSM
? Here's a starter pack for you :)
bsky.app/starter-pack...
Check also "Bootstrapping Social Networks: Lessons from Bluesky Starter Packs"
ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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A brief follow-up on the complex systems foundations of our LLM population study, sparked by ongoing debate. And why they matter for studying AI collectives more broadly.
arxiv.org/abs/2506.18600
With
@ariel-flint.bsky.social
and
@lajello.bsky.social
11 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Leo Balduf
11 months ago
Our work on Bluesky:
doi.org/10.1609/icws...
Joint work with
@bibo7086.bsky.social
@harnen.bsky.social
@garethtyson.bsky.social
@asonur.bsky.social
@ignactro.bsky.social
@baronca.bsky.social
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Bootstrapping Social Networks: Lessons from Bluesky Starter Packs | Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v19i1.35810
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Average day in AI discourse: - The big tech paper saying LLMs are harmless toys, - The influencer claiming LLMs are an existential threat.
11 months ago
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👇👇👇
add a skeleton here at some point
12 months ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Rob Noble
12 months ago
Only two weeks left to apply!
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Nice summary of our latest paper.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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AI language models develop social norms like groups of people
When LLMs are grouped together, they exhibit similar characteristics to human societies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01500-6
12 months ago
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New paper alert. "More is different" & the LLMs. LLMs are usually studied in isolation. But what happens when they start interacting? We explored this by looking at their collective behaviour. Work with
@ariel-flint.bsky.social
and
@lajello.bsky.social
1/
about 1 year ago
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Oral exams are the only true way to assess students - except in specific, marginal cases like parts of Maths or Physics. This has always been true, and we can’t ignore it anymore.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
NetPlace
about 1 year ago
🚨 Just 1 week to go! Join us in London 🇬🇧 on May 16 for the NetPlace Workshop on Networks & Physics! Keynotes, collabathon, ERC-style pitches & more 🧠⚛️💥 🆓 Registration is free 💸 Travel/accommodation support available for those who register by Friday May 9 👉
netplace.site/event/netpla...
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NetPlace workshop 2025 on Networks & Physics | NetPlace
NetPlace is organizing an in-person workshop on **Networks & Physic**, with a focus on a collabothon. Registration deadline: **9th May 2025**
https://netplace.site/event/netplaceworkshop/
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*Permanent* position in Applied Mathematics at City. We are - of course - particularly interested in profiles in Computational Social Science, Network Science, Data Science, and related fields. The application deadline is June 1st.
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMY889/l...
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Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at City St George’s, University of London
An academic position as a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMY889/lecturer-in-applied-mathematics
about 1 year ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Max Falkenberg
about 1 year ago
New preprint on the global state of political polarization research 🎉
osf.io/preprints/os...
We discuss the many different ways polarization can be conceptualised, how it manifests very differently across countries and domains, and the problems with the dominance of US focused research.
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OSF
https://osf.io/preprints/osf/3wzfq_v1
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Richard Feynman: "My request for resignation from the National Academy of Sciences [..] flow[s] from the fact that most of the membership consider their installation as a significant honor."
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 year ago
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Andrea Baronchelli
Tiago Peixoto
about 1 year ago
Some people wonder why Musk was a member to begin with. Remember that this is Brittain. The society also has royal fellows: The King of the United Kingdom, The Duke of Kent, The Princess Royal, and The Prince of Wales. Makes perfect sense to also include the real masters of the universe.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Andrea Baronchelli
Land and Climate Review
about 1 year ago
“There’s a change in how willingly these individuals express their views--they’re certainly more visible.” @bertiehb.sky.social interviews @baronca.bsky.social and @maxfalken.bsky.social on the emergence of climate denial and scepticism on X. From the archive: 12/1/23
www.landclimate.org/...
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Why is climate scepticism growing on Twitter? - Land and Climate Review
Bertie spoke to Professor Andrea Baronchelli and Dr. Max Falkenberg from The IRIS Academic Research Group about rising climate scepticism and denial online.
https://www.landclimate.org/why-is-climate-scepticism-growing-on-twitter/?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-From-the-Archive
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Andrea Baronchelli
Maximilian Schich
about 1 year ago
#CulturalDataAnalytics
Today! 🔥Andrea Baronchelli🔥 (
@baronca.bsky.social
) "From Local
#Interactions
to Global
#Conventions
: Emergent Social
#Coordination
in
#Humans
and
#Machines
."
@cudanlab.bsky.social
16:00-18:00 UTC+2 Zoom & abstract:
cudan.tlu.ee/events/2025-...
#CompSocSci
#GenAI
#Bias
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Andrea Baronchelli
Alessandro Vespignani
about 1 year ago
Influcast, Italy’s first collaborative epidemic forecasting hub for influenza-like illness. A multi-team forecasting hub that integrates 8 models from 5 teams to predict ILI incidence up to 4 weeks ahead, both nationally and regionally. Report of season 2023/24
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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