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: https://sicss.io/locations

I am so excited to announce our new...

➡️Society-Centered AI ⬅️ initiative @dukeu --

details in the link below: https://trinity.duke.edu/news/trinity-college-arts-sciences-launches-society-centered-ai-initiative?utm_source=social&utm_medium=li

New paper finds people prefer ethical guidance generated by GPT-40 over the NYT's "the Ethicist" column. Interestingly, people can discern LLM advice from humans, but this does not diminish their preference (contrary to several recent studies with similar designs): https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/w7236

What happens if you reward social media users with status badges for expressing open-mindedness? Our Polarization Lab’s new working paper sets out to answer this question via an experiment on our “Social Media Accelerator” platform wherein people interact with LLMs: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/dngcj

Judy Woodruff is a national treasure- I was so fortunate to speak to her for this new story, which stands out in my view for its nuanced take on a deeply complex issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vpfKZ-7ir4

Duke is hiring a tenure-track assistant professor of sociology this fall as well as a professor of the practice-- I'd love to see some great young computational social scientists apply! https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/28065 & https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/28071

The Trump assassination attempt *did not* increase support for political violence in the U.S. according to this new paper-- in fact, Republicans expressed *less* support for political violence against Democrats after the event: https://prlpublic.s3.amazonaws.com/reports/Political_Violence_Trump_ITS_public.pdf

So excited to announce the new *Iceland* location of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science!!! https://sicss.io/2024/iceland/ thank you to all of the brilliant organizers!

Is anyone using LLMs to study media bias? Would obviously be challenging for a number of reasons, but also potentially interesting to revisit this long suffering literature with the type of new methods I describe in this new article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314021121

If LLMs can simulate human survey responses fairly well, will this enable a new type of data fabrication/academic fraud? A question I wish I would have posed in this new article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314021121

Interesting new report from Project Liberty reviews attitudes towards AI around the globe. Check out these differences in whether people think AI is good for society : https://www.projectliberty.io/insight-report-ii

A typology of successful misinformation interventions: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01881-0

Exciting plot twist in the TikTok story: Frank McCourt, who has launched a great new non-profit that works on responsible technology called Project Liberty is now a serious player in the game to acquire the platform: https://www.semafor.com/article/05/15/2024/tech-critic-frank-mccourt-mounts-tiktok-bid

CAN GENERATIVE AI IMPROVE SOCIAL SCIENCE? I spent the last year trying to answer this question with the help of some very thoughtful reviewers (and editors) for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (ungated) : https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314021121

It is *vital* not to understate the prevalence of anti-semitism, but we must also be careful not to overstate it as well. Previous reports that 1 in 5 young people deny the Holocaust were probably very inaccurate according to this careful analysis from Pew: https://shorturl.at/rCHN1 .

Congrats to my colleague Sunshine Hillygus, Carnegie Fellow!!!! https://www.carnegie.org/awards/honoree/sunshine-hillygus/

Congratulations to @HajYazdiha, for being named a Carnegie Fellow today!!! https://www.carnegie.org/awards/honoree/hajar-yazdiha/

Interesting new research on how extremist movements spread across social media platforms: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-024-00002-2

Big advance in open-source LLMs: a new approach that helps prevent bad actors from repurposing them for malicious ends-- though the same approach might also enable censorship. Paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12699?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email