Epidemic amplification by correlated superspreading arxiv.org/abs/2509.15338

Can large language models stand in for human participants? Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. THREAD 🧵

Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The @nytimes.com has rarely felt as hopelessly out of its depth as in the past two days or so. There is still much I admire, many journalists I respect and trust, but on the Charlie Kirk assassination it simply hasn’t been very informative - not to mention some atrocious opinion “journalism”.

The Computational Foundations of Collective Intelligence arxiv.org/abs/2509.07999

3-year Responsible AI PhD studentships @ Politecnico di Torino (Turin) Focus: Responsible AI, computational social science, urban AI, climate, future of work. Start Mar 2026 (or earlier). Apply by 20 Sept 2025 → [email protected] (subject: “PhD studentships”).
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9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

📣🚨 New work out on @plos.org Computational Biology! Excited and proud to have provided the world with more maps of Puglia🕷️ Thank you all @luzuzek.bsky.social Oriol Artime @ricgallotti.bsky.social @mtizzoni.bsky.social journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... 💊main results below👇

Human Mobility in Epidemic Modeling www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.22799 great work by @pholme.bsky.social and collaborators

Assessing the risk of diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential in a changing world | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Faculty publication rates peak before tenure. Post-tenure, output stays high in lab-based fields but drops in others (i.e. sociology) and faculty produce more novel work but fewer highly cited papers www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our team had an amazing week at @ic2s2.bsky.social in Norrköping Sweden and we will post pictures of our posters and talks soon - the big news is that we're so excited to host #IC2S2 in Burlington in 2026! youtu.be/p412S4GnPkc

Day 2 Keynotes kicked off with Laura Nelson's inspiring presentation, “Why Qualitative Research Needs Computational Social Science”. What is the state of this maturing field called qualitative computational methods? What are the ongoing debates and futures? #ic2s2

Parallel sessions are underway, with multiple tracks covering network dynamics, LLMs, mobility and urban science, political narratives, and more. Scan the program, join the talks that excite you, and share your insights with the community #ic2s2.

Causality center stage at #ic2s2 with opening keynote by @eckles.bsky.social

Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521

This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I... Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…

Great work by Yuhan Li, @ngozzi.bsky.social and @netscience.bsky.social just published in PLOS Comp Bio: Estimating behavioural relaxation induced by COVID-19 vaccines in the first months of their rollout. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

The scale of US cancelled research grants versus the additional money being made available to allow US researchers to move to Europe. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🚀Job loss disrupts individuals’ mobility and their exploratory patterns🚀 Thanks to a great collaboration with @marcodena.bsky.social, @marcotonin.bsky.social, Bruno Lepri and @lorenzolucchini.bsky.social our latest study is finally out in iScience!

So excited to see this come together! 🎉 Our latest study explores the interplay between science and misinformation in public debates during COVID-19 🔍 arxiv.org/abs/2507.01481 👇Take a look

A very good, and rather sad, Big Read on children and reading from @emmavj.bsky.social on.ft.com/4krOKZA How to get children reading again

Netmob 2025 abstract submission deadline was extended until July 7th!

A foundation model to predict and capture human cognition www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Satellite and Mobile Phone Data Reveal How Violence Affects Seasonal Migration in Afghanistan https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00279 Seasonal migration plays a critical role in stabilizing rural economies and sustaining the livelihoods of agricultural households. Violence and civil conflict have lo...📈🤖

Relationship between household attributes and contact patterns in urban and rural South Africa arxiv.org/abs/2503.22239

Quantifying Institutional Gender Inequality in Contemporary Visual Art https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22103 From disparities in the number of exhibiting artists to auction opportunities, there is evidence of women's under-representation in visual art. Here we explore the exhibition history and au...📈🤖

Storie di ordinaria follia della burocrazia italiana: www.chiesaluterana.it/otto-per-mil...

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

X disproportionately pushing content from far-right parties in the “for you” feed in the context of German and Polish elections. Algorithmic auditing suggests that X’s feed algorithm uses political affiliation as a signal to boost content. @przemyslslaw.bsky.social at DETOX workshop #ICWSM

Kicking off #ICWSM with the DETOX workshop and @maxfalken.bsky.social’s keynote on why the Web is not a set of siloed platforms and why we should not study it as such. Shows why deplatforming doesn’t work exactly as we expect and why large online platforms are plagued by affective polarization

AI-assisted social media posting increases the volume of content people produce. However, that content is perceived as lower quality than purely human-generated posts. A dangerous spiral that may flood social media with low-quality content. Results from a controlled study: arxiv.org/abs/2506.14295

First SUMOC talk ✨ Prof. Mauricio Santillana (Northeastern University) on forecasting outbreaks using mathematical models & internet-based data - lessons from COVID-19. #SUMOC @sorbonne-universite.fr @fac-sante-sorbonne.bsky.social @inserm.fr

People not only form social networks, they construct mental maps of them. People think about the ties between other people, including ties among individuals to whom they are not themselves directly connected. These “cognitive social networks” have rarely been studied. 1/

Only a few days left to submit your abstract to the BeSafe Satellite Workshop @ccs2005.bsky.social. Details & submission: www.code-project.it/besafe/ Participate and feel free to spread the word. For any questions email: [email protected]. @sarawalk.bsky.social @frapierri.bsky.social

Who is using AI to code? Global diffusion and impact of generative AI https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08945 Generative coding tools promise big productivity gains, but uneven uptake could widen skill and income gaps. We train a neural classifier to spot AI-generated Python functions in 80 million ...📈🤖

📢 IFISC (UIB-CSIC) in Mallorca is offering up to 4 postdoctoral positions in complex systems science! 🔍 Topics: social systems, unconventional computing, life & environment. 📅 Deadline: 20/10/2025 🔗 Details: ifisc.uib-csic.es/en/about-ifi...

The deadline for submission is extended until June 10! Send your best work and join us in Siena at CCS!

For 40 years, Americans have lived shorter lives than people in other rich countries. For 10 years, that's been rapidly getting worse. New research: in 2022-2023, there were 1.5 million "missing Americans," who died--but wouldn't have, if America didn't have such uniquely high death rates.

You are invited to NetMob 2025! 😎🙌 #conference #network #data #paris #france

Super-interesting work on how people from different SES interact with LLMs. arxiv.org/abs/2505.12158

In just a couple of days, the grand finale of the NetSci Colloquia of this academic year, with none other than living legend Alain Barrat. Register here: iu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents arxiv.org/abs/2501.05171

🔵 Che fare? Webfare! 📅 22 maggio 2025 | 🕤 ore 9:30 📍 Aula Magna Cavallerizza Reale, Torino Domani @ccattuto.bsky.social, @isi.it Scientific Director, parteciperà al convegno "Che fare? Webfare!", dedicato al ruolo dei dati e dell'AI nella costruzione di un nuovo welfare digitale, inclusivo e umano.

This new paper finds that GPT-4 outperforms humans in debates when prompted with basic sociodemographic data. @frasalvi.bsky.social @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social @ricgallotti.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Still a few spots available to attend Charting Complexity, a conference dedicated to exploring the power of Complex Systems Science (London 10-12 of June). Program: chartingcomplexity.webflow.io. If you like to attend, express your interest here: forms.gle/qFs4vuauYXwp...

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/