I'm looking for two PhD student for Fall 2026. Both on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). - Theory of MARL: experience with theory and/or MARL -Formal methods for MARL: experience with formal methods or MARL (interest in learning the other) www.khoury.northeastern.edu/programs/com...

Honored and excited to share that I am the winner of Nomis & Science Young Explorer Award!! Also thrilled to share that my article describing my research is out now in @science.org today! The normalization of (almost) everything www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/

Do AI agents ask good questions? We built “Collaborative Battleship” to find out—and discovered that weaker LMs + Bayesian inference can beat GPT-5 at 1% of the cost. Paper, code & demos: gabegrand.github.io/battleship Here's what we learned about building rational information-seeking agents... 🧵🔽

Honored to contribute a Journal Club piece to @natrevpsychol.nature.com! I explore Robert White's seminal "competence motivation" framework (1959) and why it remains relevant over 60 years later—from why toddlers insist on doing things themselves to designing intrinsically motivated AI. 🤖

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓 The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠 Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

Forget modeling every belief and goal! What if we represented people as following simple scripts instead (i.e "cross the crosswalk")? Our new paper shows AI which models others’ minds as Python code 💻 can quickly and accurately predict human behavior! shorturl.at/siUYI%F0%9F%...

Timely reminder that 'associative' language leads lay people to confuse correlation and causation, as @tomerullman.bsky.social and I showed a few years ago. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... Snapshot from the BBC: www.bbc.com/news/article...

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 🧵

Our new lab for Human & Machine Intelligence is officially open at Princeton University! Consider applying for a PhD or Postdoc position, either through Computer Science or Psychology. You can register interest on our new website lake-lab.github.io (1/2)

Bonan's energy and excitement for CogSci are truly unmatched 🤩 Apply!

The CoLab is headed to #CogSci2025!! 🥳 Here's where to find us!

Really exciting step toward AI-informed policy design! Nice work @sethkarten.ai 🙌

Our latest on the cognitive science of LLMs! To be presented @CogSci‬2025 🎉 LLMs are increasingly involved in human collaborations. How do LLMs assign responsibility and reward to collaborators? Is it similar to how humans do it? 🤖🧑 📃 gershmanlab.com/pubs/XiangBi... (1/4)

I've learned so much working with Rachit! Highly recommend joining his lab 👏

Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"! Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"We introduce Collaborative Rational Speech Act (CRSA), an information-theoretic (IT) extension of RSA that models multi-turn dialog by optimizing a gain function adapted from rate-distortion theory." arxiv.org/abs/2507.14063

So excited our paper is now out in ‪@cognitionjournal.bsky.social‬! Huge thanks to our editor and reviewers 🧠 Their thoughtful suggestions inspired Experiments 3 & 4, including a striking inverse correlation between idleness judgments and speed-up predictions

New published paper with Ham Huang and @actlab.bsky.social! @cognitionjournal.bsky.social authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

How to cooperate for a sustainable future? We don't know (yet), but I'm thrilled to share that our new perspective piece has just been published in @pnas.org. Bridging complexity science and multiagent reinforcement learning can lead to a much-needed science of collective, cooperative intelligence.

Excited to share our findings on prediction in the brain’s "physics network" 🧠 Honored to have contributed to this work, & huge kudos to @rtpramod.bsky.social for leading the project!

Across 9 experiments (+6600 participants), we explored a paradox: How do non-experts judge scientific explanations they can’t fully understand? We found that scientific jargon can increase people’s satisfaction with explanations, even though it makes them less comprehensible. 2/9

A lot of people say generative AI shouldn't infringe on copyright. These researchers actually tried to do it. The result: an 8 terabyte dataset of text that's openly licensed or in the public domain & 7 B parameter model that performs as well as Meta's Llama 7B www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Out now in TiCS, something i've been thinking about a lot: "Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition" (by Balaban & me) relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...

Are you an RL PhD at Harvard who has had your funding wrecked by the government and working on topics related to multi-agent? Reach out, I am happy to try to find a way to support you.

We are recruiting two postdoctoral scholars for a research project in human collective intelligence and creativity at UC Davis and Cornell. Joint project with @enfascination.com, @norijacoby.bsky.social, @oferon.bsky.social & Dalton Conley. Please forward this thread to relevant people. 1/n

Despite the world being on fire, I can't help but be thrilled to announce that I'll be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth in Fall '26. I'll be recruiting grad students this upcoming cycle—get in touch if you're interested!

Scientists just found a way to break through climate apathy. In a field of muddy results, it's among the clearest findings. grist.org/science/brea... #Science #Climate #Communication #Psychology #Greensky

The first big talk I have given since starting my lab in 2023! 🧠 👶 💻📊Thank you @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social for the invitation and recording. Feedback welcome!

**ecstatic** to share our @iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: sparse components distinguish visual pathways & their alignment to neural networks, with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social and meenakshi khosla (openreview.net/forum?id=IqH...) 1/n

New paper! 🧠 **The cerebellar components of the human language network** with: @hsmall.bsky.social @moshepoliak.bsky.social @gretatuckute.bsky.social @benlipkin.bsky.social @awolna.bsky.social @aniladmello.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n 🧵

Our new paper (first one of my PhD!) on cooperative AI reveals a surprising insight: Environment Diversity > Partner Diversity. Agents trained in self-play across many environments learn cooperative norms that transfer to humans on novel tasks. shorturl.at/fqsNN%F0%9F%...

🚨 New in Nature Human Behavior! 🚨 Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change. Both graphs in this image reflect equivalent climate change trends over time, yet people consistently perceive climate change as having a greater impact in the right plot than the left. 👇1/n

Proud to announce our primer on "Ten principles for reliable, efficient, and adaptable coding in psychology and cognitive neuroscience" www.nature.com/articles/s44... This primer is for beginners to get started, advanced programmers to improve, and PIs. #psychology #psychsci #cogsci #neuroskyence

🚨🤖👥 Webinar "Collective Intelligence in the era of LLMs" April 24 5-6pm CET www.hacid-project.eu/hacid-webina... Register nesta.zoom.us/meeting/regi... Speakers: - Jason Burton, Copenhagen Business School - Lucie Flek, University of Bonn - Nikolas Zöller, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

🔆 Announcement time!! 🔆 In Spring 2026, I will be joining the NYU Psychology department as an Assistant Professor! My lab will study the computational cognitive science of moral judgment and how we can use that knowledge to build AI systems that are safe and aligned with human values.

Are you interested in research experience before applying to PhD programs? Or just want to learn more about cognitive science? Consider joining my lab as a lab manager (joint w/the Griffiths Lab). We will begin reviewing applications one week from today: cognition.princeton.edu/news/2025/op...

🥥🥥 Announcing the Second (!!) Coordination and Cooperation for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (CoCoMARL) Workshop at RLC 2025 @rl-conference.bsky.social 🥥🥥 Please see our website for more information and the call for papers! sites.google.com/view/cocomar...

We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇 ⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social

I couldn't have asked for a better way to start doing research than working as a lab tech with @nancykanwisher.bsky.social 😄🧠 I highly recommend applying!

We all want LLMs to collaborate with humans to help them achieve their goals. But LLMs are not trained to collaborate, they are trained to imitate. Can we teach LM agents to help humans by first making them help each other? arxiv.org/abs/2503.14481

getting this paper published was a bit painful but I am proud of it: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We use deep RL to find mechanisms that help (real) people sustain the commons. Well done to Raphael Koster and Miruna Pislar (not on BlueSky). non-paywalled version on arxiv.

The Saxe Lab @ MIT is hiring! We seek one lab manager to start in summer 2025. Research in our lab focuses on social cognition (learn more on saxelab.mit.edu). Please apply at: tinyurl.com/saxe2025 (Job ID 31993). Review of applications starts on March 24, 2025. Sharing appreciated. Thank you!

Hey Bsky friends on #neuroskyence! Very excited to share our @iclr-conf.bsky.social paper: TopoNets! High-performing vision and language models with brain-like topography! Expertly led by grad student Mayukh and Mainak! A brief thread...

Spring 2025 Cooperation Colloquia We're delighted to present an exciting line-up of speakers including @ingelaalger.bsky.social, @al-cibiades.bsky.social, @rzultan.bsky.social, @cmolho.bsky.social, @fernandopsantos.bsky.social Every 2nd Friday, 15:00 UTC+1 Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

I have a draft of my introduction to cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning on arxiv. Check it out and let me know any feedback you have. The plan is to polish and extend the material into a more comprehensive text with Frans Oliehoek. arxiv.org/abs/2405.06161

Excited that our multi-agent LLM agent work, “Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents,” will be presented at #NeurIPS24 -- reach out if you want to meet up in Vancouver!

(1/5) Very excited to announce the publication of Bayesian Models of Cognition: Reverse Engineering the Mind. More than a decade in the making, it's a big (600+ pages) beautiful book covering both the basics and recent work: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204941...

(1) Vision language models can explain complex charts & decode memes, but struggle with simple tasks young kids find easy - like counting objects or finding items in cluttered scenes! Our 🆒🆕 #NeurIPS2024 paper shows why: they face the same 'binding problem' that constrains human vision! 🧵👇