How fair are the algorithms that decide who gets information online? Our new paper in PNAS Nexus shows that maximization algorithms, the ones used to pick “influencers” in social networks, unintentionally deepen inequality. 🧠 Sekara, Dotu, Cebrian, Moro & García-Herranz 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

This month, no colloquium but a special session about careers in network science! Join us and an all-star panel on October 29. Register here for a Zoom link: iu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Here is a ‘blame-praise curve’ for the percentage of household chores done by husbands People think husbands are blameworthy if they do 20%, but praiseworthy if they do 40% (!) Perceived average is above 40%, so people think below average is still praiseworthy [Thread]

You: pornbots keep randomly following me on Bluesky Me, an intellectual: pornbots are citing my books on Google Scholar

Inflation

The ruling deems the government's termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities "unlawful" and allows a lawsuit brought by humanities groups to move forward.

Replication Crisis xkcd.com/3117/

This is a travesty & a nightmare. The US was a founder of @gavi.org. It lowers global vaccine costs, has vaccinated 1B children, & averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children's lives a year - and RFK Jr will be personally responsible. www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

Don’t eat your receipts

Qing Chang will present research on “Upward mobility in the green sector for frontline fossil fuel workers”—joined by Michaël Aklin, Morgan Frank, and Shanti Gamper-Rabindran. Register NOW to join live seminar on Zoom: lnkd.in/gAhgfjMq

The EO has to be interpreted in light of the (decades long) Republican attack on science. This has nothing to do with improving science. They're using legitImate criticism from within science to (ironically) decrease the credibility of science. They then have no obligation to listen to scientists.

A story about why Democrats are losers, in four parts.

Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.

Thanks to all who joined our conversation on Social Capital in the Age of AI and the screening of Join or Die. 25 years after Bowling Alone, we explored how tech is reshaping trust, connection & civic life in the algorithmic era. @danielaldrich.bsky.social @hamishgibbs.bsky.social socialurban.net

📢 Today I was supposed to be in DC, highlighting what the NSF Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences delivers to US taxpayers. NSF had one of the highest returns on investment (ROIs) of federal grantors 👏🏻 (1) and NSF SBE funded 63% of US social and psychological science research (2). 🧵

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🚨New WP🚨 Using GPT4 to persuade participants significantly reduces climate skepticism and inaction -Sig more effective than consensus messaging -Works for Republicans -Evidence of persistence @ 1mo -Scalable! PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps... Try the bot: www.debunkbot.com/climate-change Here’s how 👇

This, @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social might be the dumbest take I've ever seen on social media. "Moderate their position on Canada?" WTF?! If the Republican party started believing in levitation, would you ask Democrats to moderate their position on gravity?

AI exposure scores can predict workers' unemployment risk! While individual AI exposure models aren't predictive of job losses, combining them creates a powerful predictive tool. #AIandJobs #FutureOfWork New work with @yyahn.bsky.social & @estebanmoro.bsky.social academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...

Perfection

I'm in the @wsj.com with @ericbeinhocker.bsky.social explaining the #CleanEnergy revolution is unstoppable. Despite the Trump administration's determination to promote fossil fuels, the economic and technological forces driving green energy are too powerful to resist. www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Next was an amazing talk by @mrfrank.bsky.social on challenges with determining how susceptible jobs are to automation at @nicoatnu.bsky.social. Frank presents a compelling network-oriented approach for modeling automation shocks. Highly recommend www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0L... (7/8)

#AI has evolved and now challenges our understanding of skills and careers. This Wednesday, we are thrilled to host @mrfrank.bsky.social to explore "AI, Complexity, and the Future of Work". Join us in person in Chambers Hall or via Zoom. #WedatNICO 🗓️ Wed 2/26 at 12pm US Central 🔗 bit.ly/WedatNICO

🎨 Is AI democratising creativity—or racing to the bottom? 🎙️ This week I talked with @mrfrank.bsky.social about how AI is reshaping creative industries. 📢 Listen now: [Podcast Link] What do you think—is AI helping or hurting creative professionals? 👇 #AIart #TechAndArt #GenerativeAI #AIethics

I had a great time on the Narrow Window podcast discussing AI and the future of work. We correctly identified that LLMs run on your laptop were imminent just weeks before DeepSeek R1 open.substack.com/pub/thenarro...

In a fast-changing economy, we need dynamic solutions for communicating and verifying our skills, knowledge, and abilities. Come have an early look at our solution! @youngjinyoo.bsky.social @kerrilemoie.bsky.social

Brilliant paper co-authored by two former MIT Media Lab group colleagues. As conflict, disease, and climate events continue to bite into systemic stability, designing for resilience in mitigation of and recovery from shocks to networks of custom become more urgent. #networks #urban #resilience

Did you know that places within cities are deeply interconnected? Stores 🛒, workplaces 🏢, parks🏞️ and other places rely on each other through the flow of people and shared patronage, creating complex dependency networks between them.

🚀 We just launched an interactive visualization to explain our recent @naturehumbehav.bsky.social paper results on how lifestyles create "Invisible Urban Dependencies" between places that shape economic resilience [Viz] 👉 socialurban.net/dependency [Paper] 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New @naturehumbehav.bsky.social paper tracks mobility to reveal surprisingly long-distance dependencies between businesses. These insights could improve policy to bolster neighborhood economies and help business owners see how closures elsewhere might impact them www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really cool personalized LLM use case. If your reaction to this is negative I don’t know what to tell you.

📢 Excited to share our latest publication in @natureportfolio.bsky.social Scientific Reports: "China and the U.S. produce more impactful #AI research when collaborating together." collaboration w/ Bedoor AlShebli, James Evans, & Talal Rahwan 🇨🇳🇺🇸🤖 🧵1/13 #scisci @uwischool.bsky.social #AcademicSky

Behaviour-based dependency networks between places shape urban economic resilience www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨No better day to announce the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami is hiring for 4 new positions in computational social science (2xPhD, Postdoc, Software Engineer) to investigate disinformation & propaganda. Come help shape climate accountability for the next four years. ⬇️ 1/n

By analyzing these behavior-based dependency networks, we demonstrate how changes in foot traffic to one location—whether from temporary closures or shifts in consumer behavior—can affect the visits of surrounding and far-away businesses.

📣 New paper in Nature Human Behavior @natureportfolio.bsky.social! Using large-scale mobility data, we find how businesses, amenities, and other urban places depend on each other. It reveals connections that aren’t always visible but have substantial economic impacts. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Postdoc opportunities at the Knowledge Lab at U Chicago. Application review begins Jan 31. form.jotform.com/241295631499...

We are hiring a postdoc/researcher at my group (SUNLab) @nunetsi.bsky.social. Interested in working on multidisciplinary problems like segregation, health, or economic growth from the perspective of Social Urban Networks? Contact me if you are interested. Please share it!

Is there more granular data reflecting workers risk of unemployment given their location and occupation? Yes! Hear about in my conversation in the AI Horizon series through the @whartonschool.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXyN...

Bluesky's firehose is a treasure trove of public data for researchers and developers, and it's completely free. Check out our developer docs: docs.bsky.app

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join the Human AI Collaboration lab at Kellogg, NU CS, and @nicoatnu.bsky.social If you're excited about computational social science, LLMs, digital experiments, real-world problem solving, this could be a great fit Please reshare! Deets 👇

We might have FINALLY met our match… #WorldBollardAssociation

🚨Funded PhD position at UCL Computer Science! 🌍💻 Learn how to use and develop LLMs, RL, Networks, and Agent-Based Models to forecast the impact of #AI in society and pathways towards a #net-zero economy. 👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #MachineLearning #ComplexSystems #GreenTransition #PhD

A wonderful postdoc opportunity to work with @estebanmoro.bsky.social who is the best collaborator and a thoughtful, dedicated mentor. I have had so much fun working with him and I learn so much from him. You will too! Apply! lnkd.in/eZ_E8pCW

The Onion should buy Elsevier next

Starterpacks seem to be a great solution to the cold start problem! It will be even greater if there's *any* recommendation engine for creating a starter pack. Using "co-citation" or even using a simple sentence embedding of profile desc may be already useful enough.

Excited to share our new paper, "Foregrounding Artist Opinions: A Survey Study on Transparency, Ownership, and Fairness in AI Generative Art," now live in the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society Proceedings! ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AI...

🚨 The Colorado Index of Complex Networks (icon.colorado.edu) is reborn! ICON 2.0 indexes 699 distinct research-quality network data sets, classified into 6 domains (Social, Biological, Information, Economic, Technology, Transportation) and 53 subdomains /1 #networkscience