How depended are societies to the internet? Check the last #LongRead from the @theguardian.com for an eye opening story:

Most people study what misinformation says. We decided to study how it looks. Using novel multi-modal AI methods, we study 17,848 posts by top climate denial accounts - and uncovered a new front in the misinformation war. Here's what it means 🧵 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Do LLMs represent the people they're supposed simulate or provide personalized assistance to? We review the current literature in our #ACL2025 Findings paper and investigating what researchers conclude about the demographic representativeness of LLMs: osf.io/preprints/so... 1/

Are you looking for a way to analyse textual data? @sof14g1l.bsky.social describes how the researchers can interact with AmCat, Amsterdam Content Analysis Toolkit #ODISSEI2025

Are you at the #ODISSEI conference? Then don't forget to pass by my poster, where I talk about what shapes the #ClimateChange narrative in #Mexico.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

"For the sick, the anxious, the isolated and many other vulnerable people who may lack medical resources and attention, AI’s vast knowledge base, coupled with its affirming and empathetic tone, can make the bots feel like wise and comforting partners."

Nothing to see here? Well, this is a slow moving 🧵 for #skystorians and others about #eyeglasses of the past, about how to read in the past, where to buy eyeglasses, and how to do with them in general. The hashtag is #HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast Let's roll.

Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.

Very glad to see this piece by the @nytimes.com on data center struggles from Mexico to Ireland: "Government support worldwide has helped tech firms build with little accountability, said Ana Valdivia, an Oxford University lecturer studying data center development." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

This well-known aquatint by Goya came to mind as symbolising where we are right now. It’s called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

This morning my ChatGPT quota was inexplicably exhausted. It took a while but I pieced it together. Voice mode somehow got activated when I went to bed. The bot then engaged in a 10 hour conversation with my snoring dog, answering questions the pup wasn’t asking and praising him for his insight.

🫶🫶

It just started!

My favorite #sport is running from one platform to another to catch my #train. 👟 #HighAdrenaline #NS.nl

Added 🗓✅️

This week was hectic. Puuuf.🫠

#AmCAT is proudly developed by the @societal-analytics.nl You can learn more about it in the: * Book: amcat.nl/book/ * Blog post: societal-analytics.nl/blogs/202501...

Day 2 of the #MEDemConference at @gesis.org starts with powerful tool demos: 🔍 AmCAT @sof14g1l.bsky.social on enabling large-scale text analysis of media & political debates. 🌐 HarDIS @sziaja.bsky.social on harmonizing and sustaining cross-national democracy data (surveys, parties, experts).

This is such a good example.

Are you a social scientist that wants to learn R? Then, you may find my course "R for Social Scientists" very useful! I designed this course to give social scientists all that is necessary to start using R in their everyday work. github.com/SofiaG1l/R_C...

That secret code shared among those who read a book in public transport. 📖🚄

So true

Foregrounding ethical, legal and social implications of AI is crucial as @alondra.bsky.social argues in @science.org Hard agree: we pursue Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects (ELSA) in our @aimediademlab.bsky.social We need way more of this. Globally 🌍 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

"Large language models like ChatGPT contain all kinds of noise," says Claes de Vreese, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Society at the University of Amsterdam. "You get answers that incorporate opinions. The answers are polluted." nos.nl/nieuwsuur/co...

Summer break is over. 🥹

my keynote happening in a few mins. registration here to stream it aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...

“The company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI.”

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41... We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/

It is so eye opening to learn about the dangers of eugenics from different perspectives. If you do not know what eugenics is, I would recommend you to follow @rebeccasear.bsky.social work. If you want to learn about its role in the AI race, then check @ruha9.bsky.social work, e.g.:

I absolutely recommend this panel session about AI. Who is technology serving? Whose benefits is it advancing? youtu.be/gEp4gMV9g3o?...

I'm gonna start spreading real science in the style of fake news and maybe it'll get more traction. "What they DON'T want you to know! The mitochondria IS the powerhouse of the cell! 😱"

This is a kind reminder that LLMs are cultural machines...

Monday motivation

We are up and running follow our new profile for the Computational Methods Division of ICA! 🤖

No private company should have this much control over higher ed. And let’s be clear: OpenAI’s vision is for *their commercial product* to become part of the core infrastructure of higher ed- not AI in general. Because they are currently not a profitable company.

I'm feeling so uncreative...

Looking forward to sharing our research at the @oii.ox.ac.uk and hearing about other colleagues at "The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chains", organised by Princeton's Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab led by @alondra.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/live/5Z8_5O5...

🤖💡 Are LLMs really developing social behaviors—or just reproducing familiar patterns from training? In our new paper, @pettertornberg.com and I take a closer look at recent claims of emergent conventions in AI and offer a different perspective... 🧵

Hearing university teachers say that the whole educational system will change to just teaching students to prompt #ChatGPT is the sadest of the sadest thing I've heard. Aren't universities supposed to be the house of critical minds?

The first research project where I am PI, “Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in government agencies”, was selected by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to seek sponsorship! Everything is in Dutch, but it can be translated with the Google translate plugin.

what if… 🤔

Nothing like #BombaEstereo to keep the good mood.

A regular reminder that a thriving modern city depends on giving people the option to walk, or bike, or take the bus. Not cars. Een herinnering dat een bloeiende multimodale stad afhankelijk is van de mogelijkheid voor mensen om te lopen, te fietsen en de bus te nemen. Niet van auto's. Utrecht, NL

This is happening next Monday! 📢 Come come!

Had great fun at @tilburg-university.bsky.social's #NightUniversity. During the talk, I asked the audience what they think the main reason is people expect they won't have #children. The room was majority young #students. This is what they said (& yes, my opening slide might have primed them ;))...

Registration for the posit::conf(2025) virtual experience is now open! Join us virtually, Sept 16–18, and access live-streamed keynotes and 100+ talks, on-demand recordings, Q&A sessions, and our virtual networking platform. Learn more in the blog post: posit.co/blog/posit-c... #RStats #Python