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 🧵

Nature research paper: Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour go.nature.com/3KsDgbG

Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment. Bristol band uses live facial recognition on concertgoers to create uncomfortable art about surveillance culture. https://www.gadgetreview.com/massive-attack-turns-concert-into-facial-recognition-surveillance-experiment

I'm hiring again! Please share. I'm recruiting a postdoc research fellow in human-centred AI for scalable decision support. Join us to investigate how to balance scalability and human control in medical decision support. Closing date: 4 October (AEST). uqtmiller.github.io/recruitment/

I wrote a response to Thomas Friedman's "magical thinking" on AI here: aiguide.substack.com/p/magical-th...

Brilliant! 😄

Very clever!

Anyone who plans to submit for an ARC grant should be giving feedback via this survey.

Here's the link to their "stakeholder survey on the use of AI in grant assessment": www.surveymonkey.com/r/X7PY5GL

Fully funded PhD scholarships at the Max Planck School of Cognition (Deadline Dec 1st) You can apply to work with me or one of the many amazing school faculty. Apply here: cognition.maxplanckschools.org/en/application

45 signatures on the official government petition already! We need at least 50: let's make it happen! www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/... #Australia #PhD #HigherEducation

My petition to the 🇦🇺 Australian government: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt! 📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/... ⏰ Deadline: October 1

It supports researchers who have been displaced, or are at risk of displacement, due to war or natural disasters, and who currently have limited access to resources and institutional support. Apply here: www.maxminds.mpg.de/3630/apply The deadline to apply is September 15.

If you know a 🚨 Scholar at Risk 🚨 please share! I am delighted to share that applications are now open for the MAXMINDS mentoring program.

ARC says they’ll announced Discovery Indigenous outcomes tomorrow. Recently, announcements have been made around 11am (Canberra time). But even more recently ARC’s comms have been at weird hours, so we’ll see what happens.

My latest newsletter is about the excesses of big tech, why Europe should declare war on Silicon Valley, and how it can win. whatwelost.substack.com/p/how-europe...

New post on Optimally Irrational: Everything you ever wanted to know about friendship: why it feels good, has its rituals, and sometimes brings anxiety. The puzzles of friendship make sense once we unpack its strategic layers. www.optimallyirrational.com/p/friendship...

My video about how LLMs are not search engines has led to many, MANY comments telling me that I should be using Perplexity. Some insisting that Perplexity does not hallucinate. Out of a list of 26 papers it just provided me (in "Research" mode) 4 were real. FOUR. 85% hallucination rate.

like so many products to come out of silicon valley in the last decade or so, AI is a legal innovation masquerading as a tech innovation. the legal theory seems to be that AI is entitled to everything but liable for nothing.

Thoughtful reflections on how universities can and must adapt to the rise of generative AI, including by returning to ancient practices. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o... Left unaddressed is how scalable online education will survive the rise of AI without sacrificing academic integrity

UX researchers are not ok, according to this post. They’re asked often to find some data that affirms users want more AI but when they don’t find that, they worry about losing their jobs quantuxblog.com/things-im-he...

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Some stellar news out of the School of Computing this week -- we're hiring two new tenure-track positions in AI!! 🎉 🎉 🎉 1/3

These councillors are delusional. "Christianity built democracy". This guy needs some history lessons.

The pelicans out in force at UQ St Lucia Campus this week.

Platforms want to keep you online for as long as possible but rainbows & unicorns dont keep people engaged. Outrageous, toxic content does. Demonetization is not solving the problem. Platforms breed toxicity bc of the business model My interview @wired.com @laurahday.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2jmfjmn7

So Dan held her too close and stabbed her in the back...

"The Liberal Party has warned that recognising the state of Palestine could lead to a slippery slope of recognising other inconvenient realities, such as climate change and women." theshovel.com.au/2025/08/13/l...

📢 Call for AAAI-26 Doctoral Consortium Submissions (Deadline: September 30 AoE) Doctoral students in the AI community are invited to apply to the Doctoral Consortium at #AAAI26, held on January 20-21 2026 in Singapore! aaai.org/conference/a...

Hi all. Some good news: 1. The 2025 Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society is receiving funding from the NSF to support the Doctoral Consortium. 2. The deadline for 1-page contributions has been extended to August 31st. rcais.github.io

Australian-based researchers: just a reminder that before 19 Aug, you should set up multi-factor authentication for the RMS: www.arc.gov.au/news-publica... 1. Log in to RMS. 2. Go to ‘Personal Details’ in Action Centre. 3. Click ‘MFA Settings’. Follow the prompts. Took me 60 seconds.

Settings > Content & Media > Thread Preferences > Tree view ✅

Holy crap every single post is negative www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/

This is possibly one of the best and most entertaining analogies about gen AI on the workplace that I have seen. Very clever.

Hi all. I whipped up a blog post that give non-technical intuition behind how LLMs and chatbots work. mark-riedl.medium.com/the-intuitio... It's a variation on a talk I've given a few times to K-12 teachers and other non-technical LLM users.

data visualization is my passion

My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new algorithm solves the classic single-source shortest paths problem faster than ever before — by finding paths out of order:

[Pls repost] Hi folks, do you have any templates for reasonable accommodations letters written by your provider/doc for Long Covid? I'm collecting samples to help the broader community, esp those who are underserved. If you feel comfortable sharing, it will help a lot of people. DMs open.

Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up theonion.com/austral...

Teaching conditions are learning conditions. When teachers thrive in their workplace, so do our kids. That’s why we should all get behind Queensland teachers today and join their calls for fairer pay and better working conditions. Solidarity. 💚✊️

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen. By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

Stack Overflow's latest survey of developers highlighted plummeting trust in the output of AI tools. So for @leaddev.com I looked into why that's happening leaddev.com/technical-di...

The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler’s diaries lay bare frontier atrocities www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

This is an incredible and odd story

Seeing I shut down my X account, I might repost some of my more interesting (at least to me!) previous threads here. First up: Pete's Odd Adventures in Academic Publishing - Episode 3: The Phantom Author. This is going to be a lengthy post, but bear with me - the bizarreness merits full details.

The Matildas will be playing the Philippines, IR Iran and South Korea at the 2026 Asian Cup. #WAC2026

LLMs are making the internet less secure because they generate false bug reports and overwhelm cybersecurity professionals. Some are halting their bug bounty programs as a result.

Applications are open for the Doctoral Consortium at the 2025 Summit on Responsible Computing, AI, and Society rcais.github.io. Taking place October 27, 2025. Applications received by September 15 will receive full consideration.