To understand functionality, we have to follow perturbations, flows, time scales and the diversity of possible responses. Following-up my latest seminar, invted by @kayson.bsky.social & Petra Vertes, I summarize the main findings and the discussion here: manlius.substack.com/p/what-netwo... 1/

AI gives us the marks of thought without giving us a thinker. A new post on why this may be less a puzzle about machines than a mirror for an old confusion of ours. “A thinking thing that is no one” baronca.substack.com/p/a-thinking...

The essay was never just words on a page. It was a promise. My new post, "The Student Who Wasn't There," is about what AI does to that promise, and how to keep it. baronca.substack.com/p/the-studen...

New preprint out! As the UK plans to ban social media for under 16s, we show how the tone of awareness regarding mental health varies across topics and years during the Mental Health Awareness Month on Tik Tok. arxiv.org/abs/2606.13581

AI can reduce friction in academic work. But if the most powerful tools become increasingly expensive, the same technology may also help existing advantages compound. baronca.substack.com/p/the-subscr...

AI does not only make content cheaper to produce. It may also make consensus cheaper to manufacture. The next challenge for democracy may be artificial agreement, not only artificial information. I’ve written about this on Substack: baronca.substack.com/p/when-conse...

Our new correspondence argues that the impact of conversational AI won’t stay inside the screen. We need to understand how sustained human–LLM interactions shape connection, agency, resilience, and social life, so that these systems strengthen, rather than erode, our relationships with one another

It exists!

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-...

“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..."

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

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....

New preprint out

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)

Keep pushing & don't forget the bigger picture :)

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/...

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

This is a good metaphor for science.

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.

Our new collective effort highlights what happens when AI acts in populations rather than as isolated tool. TL;DR: a lot.

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.

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

👇

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)

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

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.

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.

Group size effects and collective misalignment in LLM multi-agent systems arxiv.org/abs/2510.22422

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.

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

“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.

'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.'

Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran cyberscoop.com/citizen-lab-...

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!

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

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...

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!

Looking forward to it!

🚨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

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...

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/

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...

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

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

Average day in AI discourse: - The big tech paper saying LLMs are harmless toys, - The influencer claiming LLMs are an existential threat.

👇👇👇

Only two weeks left to apply!

Nice summary of our latest paper. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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/

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.