We’re taking to the streets once more to protect our rights, freedoms, and humanity against tyranny. The next national NO KINGS protest is on March 28. Join us

🧠 Lancement du Semestre thématique #IVADO sur le Raisonnement et l’IA avec Aaron Courville, @glajoie.bsky.social, @alisongopnik.bsky.social qui ont accueilli ce matin les très nombreux(ses) participant(e) du 1er atelier sur Les bases cognitives du raisonnement (dans l’esprit et l’IA).

Philosophy Talk, one of my favorite podcasts, now is available for free! You can search the archive of over 600 episodes and here are mine on topics ranging from Imagination to Cruelty to Nature vs Nurture. philosophytalk.org?s=Alison+Gop...

Really great new paper using agent-based modelling to show how an exploratory childhood can lead to innovation in the population at large. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

See whole excellent thread, very interesting result, but actually quite similar to the surprising, important way systems can master syntax. "intelligence" is a misguided concept , but question is whether these abilities translate to discovery and exploration of the external world beyond text

Moving forward 🇺🇸. “When asked if the president would sign the bill, the White House directed NBC News to a statement earlier this month from the White House Office of Management and Budget. The statement said that the administration supported the bill.” 🧪🏠 NO MAJOR CUTS

I'm looking forward to speaking at the How the Light Gets In Festival in May in Hay-on-Wye. How often does a philosophy meeting have a Ferris wheel? May 22nd-25th Hay-on-Wye Website link: howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/ha... @HTLGIFestival

We said the season was over – but for Prof Alison Gopnik, we made an exception. In this bonus PsychTalks episode, Nick and Cassie had a conversation with one of the world's most influential developmental psychologists about how our minds change across our lives. Listen here: go.unimelb.edu.au/3axe

Our paper on the "Oneirogen hypothesis" is now up in its revised form on eLife! This is the hypothesis that psychedelics induce a dream-like state, which we show via modelling could explain a variety of perceptual and learning effects from such drugs. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 🧠📈 🧪

yes, this is a really great paper, showing how AI can enhance individual science but narrow the general scope.

Another great piece from Kelsey Piper about caring for kids. Against white-knuckle parenting open.substack.com/pub/theargum...

An excellent essay at Bloomberg by Walter Frick very clearly explaining our ideas about Large Models as a cultural and social technology bloomberg.com/news/article...

A beautiful and informative video about our Templeton World Charity Foundation project on the Social Science of Caregiving. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBbG...

My talk at the terrific MAIN (Montreal AI and Neuroscience) meeting on cognition, neuroscience and AI linking Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. youtube.com/watch?v=qrwB...

This years Christmas Mantel in celebration of Mary Poppins, Thalo's (and my) favorite mysterious superhero. Note genuine, and only slightly cracked Royal Doulton Bowl. Happy New Year to everybody

A 2025 highlight ⚡ In February, CASBS's project on The Social Science of Caregiving, led by @alisongopnik.bsky.social, guest-edited the Winter 2025 issue of Dædalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Learn about the project & read the entire open access issue: bit.ly/3Qm49ha

Excellent piece from Kelsey Piper at The Argument. How getting richer made teenagers less free . I really like The Argument, in general, worth checking out. open.substack.com/pub/theargum...

I think of AI and LLMs as a new kind of archival access in the sense of @himself.bsky.social and @alisongopnik.bsky.socials take of AI as cultural technology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Nice thread describing our new study on why kids play

New paper with Junyi Chu, Tomer Ullman et al showing that kids think more difficulty is more fun! Fun isn't easy: Children selectively manipulate task difficulty when “playing for fun” versus “playing to win”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

New preprint in advance of a Phil Trans paper. Outlining a theoretical argument bridging Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. And empirical data that kids do too! arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230

There’s a fantastic developmental science resource called Children Helping Science, at MIT (childrenhelpingscience.com). Researchers run child studies online, Parents sign up & participate with their kids. CHS got an offer from an anonymous donor: matching gifts up to $100K through December!

The decision by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downgrade its recommendations to protect infants from hepatitis B is a dangerous move that will harm children. Click here to read AAP's full statement: bit.ly/3Y9ZQJT

In a keynote at NeurIPS 2025, Melanie Mitchell argues that developmental and comparative psychologists have a lot to teach AI researchers about studying cognitive capabilities. https://spectrum.ieee.org/melanie-mitchell?share_id=9075652

In the running for greatest human accomplishment.

Annual Thanksgiving blog post! This year we are giving thanks for "information." www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2025/11...

If you’d like to independently investigate this for yourself, here’s one simple way: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Reflecting on last year's gala as we get ready for our 111th on 12/9. We hope to see you as we honor Claudia Goldin, Alison Gopnik, and Christopher Eisgruber of @princeton.edu.

An excellent and very clear piece on LLM's and thinking. See also Farrell et al. in Science, our piece making the point about LLM's as a form of communication rather than cognition. alisongopnik.com/Papers_Aliso...

For our next episode, "Can #AI Help Us Understand #Babies?" we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, to ask UC Berkeley cognitive scientist @alisongopnik.bsky.social how babies learn—and why grownups should be jealous: youtu.be/taZeJc7frK0 #PhilSky #philosophy #language

Day Three of the #NaturalPhilosophy Symposium kicked off with Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social talking about Evaluating Cognitive Capacities in AI Systems, with commentary by Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbe...

Join this free workshop on Nov 12 with Steven T. Piantadosi of Science Homecoming and learn the how-to's and beneficial impacts of communicating the importance of scientific research to your local community through opinion pieces. Register today. Link in comments.

The National Institute of Social Sciences is delighted to announce Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and philosopher of mind at UC Berkeley, as one of the 2025 Honorees for its Gold Honor Medal for distinguished service to society and humanity.

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

This was a really great event , amazingly good communication given the great range of disciplines, and a tribute to Sean and Jennan.

An excellent new poscast on our care project - why caregiving is so important to human nature and so neglected in social science. www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Uz...

This seminar by @alisongopnik.bsky.social was really good. It's ostensibly about AI, but ventures into some fascinating topics about childhood development and caregiving, and what I really loved was how Alison tied all that together. If this is where AI research goes, it makes me much more hopeful.

What if care was never a soft skill, but the deepest form of intelligence? Dr. Alison Gopnik makes the case that caregiving is core to what makes us human - biologically, emotionally, politically. This episode explores care as connection, courage & a quiet kind of wisdom. Listen: pod.link/1519411454

Will be fun to see who is as smart as a 4 year old

This should be a fascinating and exciting workshop

Reserve your free tickets to SFI’s next Community Lecture with renowned developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik: “Transmission Versus Truth: What Will It Take to Make an AI as Smart as a 4-Year-Old?” October 21, 7:30 pm at The Lensic Performing Arts Center. Tickets: lensic.org/events/aliso...

This is the way www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

This is one of my favorite interviews, especially about how two-year-old Thalo revealed to me the total awesomeness of garbage trucks · See why here: templeton.org/news/what-ch...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine major universities “is extortion, plain and simple,” Erwin Chemerinsky writes in a guest essay. “It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it.”

I suggested that play is an example where the metric maximized by adults in the ARC games (task completion) is precisely the metric minimized by children during play: the ideal imaginative play is never completed. "Success" is failure. Learning "efficiency" in this setting is irrelevant.

A good piece in the NYT that pairs well with my own recent post on "magical thinking" about AI. NYT (gift link): www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o... My post: aiguide.substack.com/p/magical-th...

OpenAI's "what is ChatGPT, anyway?" study is a little weird, sort of funny, but actually illuminating nymag.com/intelligence...

vindicating I think for @himself.bsky.social, @alisongopnik.bsky.social, et al, particularly the drift toward GPT-as-reference-librarian usage

Understanding AI as a social technology www.programmablemutter.com/p/understand...