Felix M. Simon
@felixsimon.bsky.social
Research Fellow in AI, Information & News, Reuters Institute, Oxford University | Research Associate, Oxford Internet Institute | Junior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College | AI, (mis)info, news, democracy | My views etc… https://www.felixsimon.net/
The Reuters Institute recently published a great interview with the New York Times’ Malachy Browne on visual investigations – I think there were a couple of points on process as a new credibility signal worth paying attention to (see Substack & thread) open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
I seem to be a sucker for having 🍅 🍅 🍅 thrown at me right before the weekend but here we are
Felix M. Simon@felixsimon.bsky.social · 5d agoSlightly befuddled by Google doing this but equally irritated by claims that this is going to be a disaster, misinformation wise: x.com/Google/statu... Some thoughts below…
Slightly befuddled by Google doing this but equally irritated by claims that this is going to be a disaster, misinformation wise: x.com/Google/statu... Some thoughts below…
🚨New Science Advances🚨 Untrustworthy sources on Facebook and Instagram in 2020: Concentrated exposure but no attitudinal effects www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... -Exposure very low but highly concentrated -Reducing exposure by ~70% for months had no measurable effects *even among frequent consumers*
On the labour creation effects of a new technology, here Gutenberg’s printing press: “Finally, printing required more workers and more division of labor than scribing” (from Ann Blair’s magisterial “Information in Early Modern Europe).
In den 1980ern hatte ich in Kunst "kritische Verfremdung"
One of the interesting epistemic side-effects of AI diffusion to me is the two-tier system that seems to have emerged around it in terms of information access/quality and people’s perception of what AI can(not) do as a result.
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I have a new paper out in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social w/ the briliant @aybukeatalay.bsky.social and @aliaelkattan.com We show that what we pay attention to online is a lot more politically diverse than what public engagement signals would suggest... sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement
Article: Information Diets Are More Diverse in Attention Than in Engagement | Sociological Science | Posted July 21, 2026
sociologicalscience.com
So... what *did* actually happen with the OpenAI attack on Hugging Face? With the help of able experts, I've delved into the detail in a way I've not really seen other outlets do for @sciam.bsky.social - and ask what's next www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...
What OpenAI’s rogue agent really did in the Hugging Face hack
The agent pursued its objective far beyond what researchers intended, revealing how difficult powerful AI systems can be to contain
scientificamerican.com
Last summer, I co-organised a small symposium on AI agents which in light of the OpenAI/Hugging face news feels prescient. Some quotes from the symposium report: "Several of those present argued that many of the most pressing risks are systemic."
One obvious place to start fixing this: excise all references to "Kobayashi Maru" from the training corpus.
In September I'll be spending three weeks at the Institute for Advanced Study of the Research Alliance Ruhr – the @college-uaruhr.bsky.social in Essen – as an Invited Fellow, by kind invitation of Julika Griem. Would be great to meet people in the area while I’m there.
It won’t stop at math. Machines getting better at thinking through abstract problems than we are is going to be an emotional crisis for lots of people. I wish we were engaging that directly instead of having ridiculous shadow-debates about GPUs’ inherent thirst for water.
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2w agoVery worried about this sort of thing hitting more broadly:
For four years, AI has reigned supreme – and lots of news organisations have jumped on the bandwagon/caught on/thought deeply about how they, too, could make use of it. What do they (want to) use it for? Increasingly for content creation. Full post here: open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
AI coverage 1, Climate coverage 0: In comparison to AI, climate change barely received any media coverage as of late. open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...
So what are the main DNR AI findings? 1) AI chatbot use for news up to 10% (from 7%), but only 1% cite it as main news source 2) Usage skews toward news-interested, AI-trusting, and younger audiences (16% of under-35s) South Korea, Spain doubled YoY; USA, UK, Germany flat
✨ 🤖 A brief summary of the AI findings of the Digital News Report 2026, a 48-country survey of news use and attitudes, now out by the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social.
Against my better judgment, I wrote something short on the claim that UK news isn't paying enough attention to the Claude Fable quagmire and AI more broadly.
Credit to my FT colleagues' follow-up, which published new details before the weekend was over (and includes five credits across four timezones!)
Anthropic scrambles after Trump administration freezes its top AI models
Export controls on Fable and Mythos raise doubts over how US will police the most powerful AI systems
ft.com
Felix makes good rebuttals to the "why does no one cover this??" tweets. But also: this news broke around 1am Saturday morning in London! It's hard for anyone to do much beyond writing up Anthropic's statement at that hour.
Felix M. Simon@felixsimon.bsky.social · 2mo agoAgainst my better judgment, I wrote something short on the claim that UK news isn't paying enough attention to the Claude Fable quagmire and AI more broadly.
Against my better judgment, I wrote something short on the claim that UK news isn't paying enough attention to the Claude Fable quagmire and AI more broadly.
✨ 🤖 New pre-print: Is realism dead and do people distrust everything, now that synthetic media is ubiquitous? It’s a bit more complicated.
Interview research from 🇲🇽🇺🇸🇬🇧finds concerns over AI-generated misinfo drive "indexical discounting" eroding realism heuristic, many want systemic remedies. @richardfletcher.bsky.social presents work led by @felixsimon.bsky.social @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social at #ICA26 Preprint osf.io/preprints/so...
New work with @ryanmoore.bsky.social in @digitaljournalism.bsky.social examines Americans' exposure to Pink Slime websites--partisan websites that masquerade as local news--and compares consumption levels to untrustworthy and genuine local news websites doi.org/10.1080/2167...
Not entirely sure I agree with everything argued in this short commentary pre-print on AI slop, but I do think the authors get one thing right: It’s too easy to dismiss AI slop.
Today in something that might not be entirely surprising but is still worth stating clearly: When we ask people to think about the what AI will do to news and their experience of it, their answers do not emerge from a vaccuum of perfectly rational and neutral observation.
