Goblin mode - genAI edition

Everyone in my cohort have passed MA defenses and I feel so proud and excited to see how our work has changed/adapted/improved since we started together in 2023. A special group and in a wonderful Sociology department. ☺️🎉🥳

Excited to announce that Tyler McCormick and I are organizing a Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at the University of Washington, with a focus on AI and social science research. July 6-17 We encourage applications from PhD students, postdocs, and junior faculty: sicss.io/2026/uw/

Congrats @kyrawilson.bsky.social !!

At #PAA2026, visit booth 409 to see what Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) @mpidr.bsky.social is up to.

token-flation?

Post Doc at Uni Tübingen! 100% position for 3 (+3) years; they're looking for somebody to analyze large-scale longitudinal datasets in education research. Expertise in machine learning is an advantage, commitment to research transparency desirable 😌 proficiency in German beneficial but not required

Olympic Sport 🤝 Academia Workshop for a reconciled humanity

Join us for a Bellwether Lecture tomorrow! 🔔 University of Michigan School of Information Assistant Prof. azjacobs.bsky.social will discuss structure, governance, and inequality in sociotechnical systems & hidden assumptions in machine learning. 📅 April 8, 12:10-1:30 pm 📍 210 South Hall & Online

3-year contract for a Phd position in Sociology on the discourse of/about AI, at l'Institut polytechnique de Paris.

Whoa. "[F]inetuning exclusively on Haruki Murakami's novels unlocks verbatim recall of copyrighted books from over 30 unrelated authors...Our findings offer compelling evidence that model weights store copies of copyrighted works." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

In a new study out in Science Advances, we estimated that 19% more COVID-19 deaths than those officially reported occurred in the United States between March 2020 and December 2021. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #demography #epidemiology #COVID-19

Really interesting distinction. Authors use gold standard in-patient records to train a classification model, predict on out-patient data, and find more COVID deaths than officially reported. I think "predict" correctly describes their mechanism, while "estimate" correctly describes their conclusion

Attention NYC undergrads: Applications are open for our 13th annual Data Science Summer school at Microsoft Research NYC! Apply here by April 14th: bit.ly/3pCQENh

New paper with @ihsankahveci.bsky.social, Amy Hagopian and others at Social Networks - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... check it out!

Amazing Capitol Hill day for our members who met with Congressional offices to talk about the importance of population science. Thank you for your hard work! @tiffanylgreen.bsky.social @burgards.bsky.social @uwcsde.bsky.social

This is very good - excited to learn more about vitamins

"The stories we tell about technology shape our cities and our civic future," writes Nassim Parvin in a @seattletimes.com op-ed on pedestrian safety in the context of driverless cars proliferating. @nassimparvin.bsky.social www.seattletimes.com/opinion/driv...

Great post worth reading. In working on a related comment earlier today, it occurred to me that we don’t discuss often enough how the fields most concerned about science (and most involved in reforming it) are the ones most wedded to NHST as the arbiter of truth.

In “Limits of Predicting Individual-Level Longevity,” Badolato et al. assess a range of classic statistical & machine learning survival analysis models. @nickirons.bsky.social @monjalexander.bsky.social @ugobas.bsky.social @ezagheni.bsky.social @mpidr.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

it’s not you, it’s me. I recalibrated my gradient and we‘re orthogonal now

Most tech workers, even at Palantir (probably), are pro-social compared to the tech owner and VC classes. They need unions so their voices matter for company governance. www.wired.com/story/palant...

So much anti-fat discrimination and ads promoting semaglutides and AI. Would be crazy if someone wrote a dissertation on this...

🚀 Apply to CMU LTI’s Summer 2026 “Language Technology for All” internship! 🎓 Open to pre‑doctoral students new to language tech (non‑CS backgrounds welcome). 🔬 12–14 weeks in‑person in Pittsburgh — travel + stipend paid. 💸 Deadline: Feb 20, 11:59pm ET. Apply → forms.gle/cUu8g6wb27Hs...

I talk a bit about the history of bonds in this radio show. "We hear about their history, how they have shaped companies and countries, and why some fear the bond market could trigger the next global meltdown."

Wrote a summary of a great keynote by @zey.bsky.social at NeurIPS, arguing that we’re having the wrong nightmares about AI: not AGI or superhuman benchmarks, but good-enough genAI at scale threatens "load bearing frictions" society relies on to signal effort, authenticity, sincerity, credibility.

Hey! Go follow my new account, @mayorofseattle.bsky.social !

In a new blog post, I contrast two flavors of empiricism: the one practiced in the social sciences and the one practiced in ML/CS. I argue that we need both, given that CS is increasingly about "claims," and not just constructing artifacts. doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...

Jordan D. Klein & Ingmar Weber published a Letter to the Editor in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that opens a conversation on the findings of Chi et al (Measuring global migration flows using online data). https://www.demogr.mpg.de/go/PNAS-Letter-Editor

New paper in Social Science Research 📄 Using expenditure data, we find same-sex couples are modestly more likely than different-sex couples to outsource housework. Much of this gap reflects higher education and paid work hours, though much is unexplained. Free access for 50 days: tinyurl.com/ssossr

I wrote a piece on LLMs, citation metrics, and the institution of science. It's been up for a couple of days, but it is officially "out" now.

Isn't an important part of the work of organizing building that imagination -- helping people see that it doesn't have to be this way? (And then also finding and sharing resources at a local level and...)

Update: I shared some confidence intervals and more at this years @imprs-phds.bsky.social annual academy. Missed you @drjenndowd.bsky.social but more to come!

It's great to see IMPRS-PHDS doctoral students, alumni, faculty members, and friends back at @mpidr.bsky.social for our 7th PHDS Academy and three days filled with research presentations, networking, and singing!

Come visit MPIDR in ☀️Summer 2026☀️ 📣Call for Application for the "Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program" 📅☀️June 8th – August 21st, 2026☀️ 🗺️MPIDR in Rostock, Germany Application Deadline: Jan 14, 2026 Apply here and learn more: incubator.demogr.mpg.de

Stereotypes aside, we really gotta help folks understand the ecological fallacy better. It’s pervasive!

Are we just accepting AI-assisted peer review systems moving forward, then? This issue of authors injecting prompts for favorable reviews is moot in a world where reviewers are human only. Right? Am I missing something?

I’m on the #EconJobMarket! I study labor, extreme weather adaptation, and inequality. My JMP addresses an under-studied aspect of the labor market: schedule unpredictability among hourly workers in the service sector. 🧵👇

reflecting on men's ncaa xc results: honestly a good day for all the teams wearing orange. cuse back on the podium, comfortable top 10 for the uva boys (7th), princeton beats harvard (sorry, Gibby) and ofc oklahoma state takes the W.

It’s about the journey, not the departure. (I missed my train)

Katie Wilson!!!!

What a fantastic thread. Good luck on the job market!!

We're excited to announce that the website and registration for IC2S2 2026 (July 28-31) will launch in early December! The Vermont Complex Systems Institute @vcsi.bsky.social at the University of Vermont will be hosting IC2S2 in 2026: youtube.com/watch?v=p412S4GnPkc&feature=youtu.be

🚨 I'm recruiting PhD students in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University for Fall 2026. If you're interested in AI, HCI, and designing better online platforms and experiences, apply to work with me! More info: piccardi.me

This is a great example of how we are very much in a new data regime. Been collaborating on an article with a few others on how we got here and what it means for governance. Excited to share more widely soon!

Unreal. As the vote count rolled in, progressive candidate Katie Wilson has overtaken Bruce Harrell by 91 votes for Seattle’s mayor. She is 0.04% ahead after having been down by more than 7 points on election night.

I'm recruiting multiple PhD students for Fall 2026 in Computer Science at @hopkinsengineer.bsky.social 🍂 Apply to work on AI for social sciences/human behavior, social NLP, and LLMs for real-world applied domains you're passionate about! Learn more at kristinagligoric.com & help spread the word!

We are thrilled to have talented students from all over the world joining us for our hybrid course on Topics in Digital and Computational Demography, and wish everyone a productive and exciting week of study!