A new paper in Science measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models. The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are organising a pre-conference workshop on Values in science in the rest of the world in Helsinki in August, just before ENPOSS 2026. Please consider submitting an abstract!

The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 15th Conference at the University of Helsinki, 26-28 August 2026. blogs.helsinki.fi/enposshel/ Deadline for submission: 1 March, 2026

Sam Altman was right - this unironically is PhD-level intelligence

Kriittiset digitaaliset palvelut olisi syytä rakentaa suomalaisten ja eurooppalaisten toimijoiden varaan. Tästä on nyt käynnissä kansalaisaloite, nimeä alle siis! digitaalinenitsenaisyys.fi

📢 Call for Papers ENPOSS. 🔷 The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences invites submissions to its 15th Conference (Helsinki 26-28 August) Deadline for submission: 1 March, 2026. Notification of acceptance: 1 May, 2026. More details: 🔹 enposs.eu 🔹 blogs.helsinki.fi/enposshel/

The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 15th Conference at the University of Helsinki, 26-28 August 2026. blogs.helsinki.fi/enposshel/

Microsoft's CEO wants us to stop calling AI garbage Slop. I agree! Instead of Slop, we should call it Nadella, to show him our appreciation of all he's done for us!

Mine and @pengzell.bsky.social paper "How Robust Are Country Rankings in Educational Mobility?" was published in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social yesterday edu.nl/y7ct3 More details in the future, but for now short explanation of what we did, and the origin story of the paper. [Thread below]

The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 15th Conference at the University of Helsinki, 26-28 August 2026. blogs.helsinki.fi/enposshel/

Problems in deploying digital materials and methods in social research should be understood as—perhaps primarily—challenges in reconciling diverging epistemic conceptions across fields and communities, suggests Juho Pääkkönen in his PhD. Read the lectio praecursoria: rajapinta.co/2025/12/04/l...

A funded PhD position in philosophy of science: AI in scientific problem solving. At @helsinki.fi @tint-philosophy.bsky.social #philsci jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 15th Conference at the University of Helsinki, 26-28 August 2026. More info here: enposs.eu

Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/

'The study...found that the main driver of increased red tape was university efficiency reforms. It threw doubt on the idea that increasing automation results in real efficiency, and suggested that Australian universities...had recently shifted towards stronger central executive management.' 1/2

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

🔈Job Alert! IAS is looking for a postdoctoral researcher as part of the Swedish Excellence Center in Computational Social Science -SWECSS. ⌛Deadline: September 30th Apply 👉 liu.se/en/work-at-l... #academicsky #css

This is exactly what doing AI-assisted research looks to me

My take on the NATO summit. Lots of unintended consequences with Europeans agreeing to something that few intend to deliver on. NATO ignoring its major challenge, fighting together as Europe with less US. That requires deep reforms, not vague spending pledges. www.csis.org/analysis/nat...

Ketju vähemmän tunnettuista tilastoista Suomesta, vertailukohtana muut pohjoismaat.🧵 Aloitetaan verotuksen tasosta. Verotulot suhteessa BKT on Suomessa pohjoismaiden alhaisimmat. Tämä ei sisällä esim. eläkemaksuja ja muita sosiaalivakuutusmaksuja. 1/

AI is going to revolutionize the way in which things suck

The understudied dangers of anthropomorphic seduction - "While the AI industry directs much effort into improving the reasoning abilities of LLMs—with mixed results—the progress in communicative abilities remains underappreciated." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We are hiring postdocs in Computational Social Science 📍SweCSS, Norrköping, Sweden ⏰Deadline June 3 🔗https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/26854 Please apply // help us spread the word

1. @alisongopnik.bsky.social, Cosma Shalizi, James Evans and myself have a new piece in Science on "AI" Large Models, pushing back against much of the collective wisdom about what they can and can't do. Official below, unpaywalled at henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod... . So why this now?

BBC just released damning research on AI assistants' news accuracy. Results: 51% of AI responses had significant issues. 19% introduced errors when citing BBC. 13% misquoted or made up BBC content entirely. 🤐🤐 www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/... via @ezraeeman.bsky.social

Oh.

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

www.programmablemutter.com/p/americas-p... I've a new piece on the Biden administration's plan to use export controls and the semiconductor chokepoint to shape the global AI system. Brief summarizing thread.

JUFO is doing its work. deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/12/finl...

I tried to lose the metaphor of levels in sociological theory, but apparently, the journal lost the paper's abstract. doi.org/10.1007/s112...

New paper: Coupling social and ecological mechanisms with the Coleman boat ecologyandsociety.org/vol29/iss4/a...

Anna-Mari Wallenberg avaa moniulotteisesta asiaa - tekoäly- ja digijuttuja säännellään eri asutuksissa ja direktiiveissä. Näiden tulkinta ja toimeenpano ovat kesken ja vaativat työtä. Eikä kristallipallo vielä kerro, miten tässä tullaan onnistumaan. www.datalit.fi/eun-digisaan...

Huge congratulations to Rodrigo Martínez Peña, who successfully defended his PhD thesis "Complex Causality. Bridging analytical sociology and social-ecological systems research"! Excellent work, Dr. Martínez Peña🥂

A small team of these editors could, with a modest time investment and effectively no start-up budget, create an open access journal -- say, "Theories of Society" -- with the same editorial board and consulting editors. Fundamentally, this is a collective action problem. It's solvable.