some good climate/energy news: * 96% of new US power capacity was carbon-free in 2024 (56 gigawatts!) * 2025 included the first month ever when 51% of power on the U.S. grid was carbon-free * The golbal trend is overwhelming: The world is now investing more $ in clean energy than fossil fuels

🔹 3rd Workshop, Mar 10-13, 2026: Social Reasoning and the Ecology of Thought with @blaiseaguera.bsky.social @ashtonanderson.bsky.social @chrisbail.bsky.social @joehenrich.bsky.social @jzleibo.bsky.social ivado.ca/en/events/so...

Applications to host a 2026 Summer Institute in Computational Social Science are due Sunday (December 1st) by 5pm. Don't forget to check out our new "Tech for Open Minds" program too. Apply here: sicss.io/host

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 Examining news on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)Low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE - even BlueSky! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma. It's *scientific publishing*. We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇

The ENSAE-CREST is hiring a computational sociologist -- Assistant or Associate Professor. Date of appointment: September 2026. Details here : www.css.cnrs.fr/assistant-or...

This is absolutely wild. I’m on a cross country flight. We are being diverted midway through to Denver. The reason? Some dude is sitting in the exit row who didn’t pay the $155 fee and he refuses to move back to his seat.

$10 million for a computer scientist who is interested in building a lab that creates new technology to increase civil discourse-- really looking forward to working with the Laude Institute on this new "moonshot" program: moonshots.laude.org

🚨New WP!🚨 Structured AI Dialogues Can Increase Happiness and Meaning in Life In a preregistered RCT, four psychology-grounded #AI chatbots improved well-being across several outcomes. Co-authors: Jonas Schoene, Johannes Eichstaedt, Aadesh Salecha, Sonja Lyubomirsky 🧵👇

Junior and senior faculty positions in computational social scientists at Bocconi, one of the world's best universiites: Assistant Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=841 Associate/Full Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=843

New jobs for computational social scientists at UNC and USC: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307... amd uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/194...

Really great discussion of political violence in the U.S. today featuring political scientist Sean Westwood: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

New dataset that describes social media activity of a very large group of US elected officials: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of the most perplexing things about the decrease in federal funding for research in universities is that Republicans have historically led the way on this (at least between 1980-2020) according to this fascinating new analysis from Dashun Wang's team): www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How much did Elon's takeover reshape Twitter/X? How did the partisan tilt of social media use change from 2020 to 2024? The ANES 2024 data is out — and this thread answers all your burning questions! 🔥

New Anthropic paper suggests LLMs have “personality vectors”: arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21509

A new Open-Source LLM from ETH Zurich just came out: ethz.ch/en/news-and-...

1/ 🚨 Big news 🚨 today we’re launching Tech for Open Minds (TOM) at @DukeU— a global program exploring how technology shapes open-mindedness, humility & polarization 🌍🧠 🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18

Open Research (OpenAI-linked research outfit) just put out a new report on using LLMs for public opinion polling that suggests they may improve response rates substantially: www.openresearchlab.org/findings/ai-...

Over the last 30 years, people a) walk faster in urban spaces; and b) linger less often according to an AI-Assisted study of video footage in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

My uncle Darius has been one of the most important people in my life-- constantly inspiring me with his generous spirit. Now his life depends on the generosity of a stranger who might be willing to donate an organ. Please help my family spread the word! nkr.org/XAX634

www.science.org/content/arti... NIH will reinstate 900 grants in response to court order | Science | AAAS

🧵1/ Just wrapped up the 3rd edition of #SICSS AMU/Law – a summer school on using AI & computational social science to study law and human rights. This year, we leveled up. Big time. ⬇️

It's #SICSS O'clock!!!! Hundreds of students all over the world are learning about computational social science *for free* thanks to the hard work of so many brilliant young scholars who dedicated their time this summer to train the next generation-- from Colombia to Kenya! sicss.io

Excited to announce we are launching a Graduate Certificate in Society-Centered AI at Duke w/coursework in computer science, social science, and philosophy/ethics and provide support to 12 current Duke students each year thanks to a new $2.4 million grant interdisciplinary.duke.edu/news/equippi...

Christ's sake, Chicago, I'm just trying to go for a walk.

From concerns about social media addiction to urgent civil liberties issues, courts are asking scientists to be arbiters of alleged technology harms. How can scientists reliably inform courts and how can courts interpret our work? New article with @penney.bsky.social tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...

Here's some good news! The file drawer problem may have diminished in recent years, at least in social science survey experiments "This suggests increased recognition of the importance of null results." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy www.science.org/content/arti...

New preprint on the global state of political polarization research 🎉 osf.io/preprints/os... We discuss the many different ways polarization can be conceptualised, how it manifests very differently across countries and domains, and the problems with the dominance of US focused research.

New paper suggests conversations with an LLM may increase people's support for climate change interventions: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Can LLMS reproduce the treatment effects of field experiments in silico? Interesting new paper suggests they do so about 78% of the time: arxiv.org/pdf/2504.01167

Using Facebook advertising data to improve survey sampling: A project started at the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Grateful that some Republican leaders are pushing back against efforts to defund American universities: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I had the great honor to award Yann leCun Duke's inaugural "Distinguished Lectureship in Society-Centered AI" last week. One of my favorite parts of his lecture was his argument that one of the greatest risks of future AI models is that they may not be built by a diverse enough group of people.

Bluesky is the place for science.

Penn State faculty position in computational social science/AI: psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

Amazing lecture on creating confidence metrics within multi-agent LLM frameworks by UNC's Mohit Bansal here at Duke's Responsible AI Symposium today. You can still join for Yann LeCun and Ronnie Chatterji later today: www.responsibleaisymposium.com

New preprint suggests large language models use trigonometry to do addition: arxiv.org/pdf/2502.00873?

I completely missed that Republicans introduced a bill to increase the endowment tax from 1.4% to 21%. If passed, Harvard would go from paying ~$35m to $525m/yr in federal taxes (that’s 8.2% of its current operating expenses)

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here: sicss.io/locations

Join us this weekend for the first-ever Society-Centered AI Hackathon at Duke as part of our inaugural Responsible AI Symposium. First 75 registrants get one of these t-shirts, and the winners get to present their work before Yann LeCun's keynote talk! Register here: www.responsibleaisymposium.com

One of the coolest jobs in social media right now IMHO

Want to hear dozens of amazing AI research talks, develop new interdisciplinary conversations as part of Duke's new Society-Centered AI initiative, or participate in our organization's first hackathon? Check out our www.responsibleaisymposium.com February 28-March 3rd.