Empirical evidence that people can build highly predictive mental models of even complex AIs, if and only if the algorithm fulfills three criteria:
Lindsay Popowski@popowski.bsky.social · 6mo agoIs the only way we can create algorithms that people understand to make them trivially simple? We argue, no. People can predict the behavior of algorithms that are arbitrarily complex, if and only if they are available, compact and aligned. arxiv.org/abs/2601.18966
CSCW folks, I wanted to highlight how excited and proud I am to see work from our community (dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/..., CSCW '24 best paper winner led by @jiachenyan.bsky.social and @mlam.bsky.social) grow and expand ambition into this Science paper. CSCW has a ton to offer the world.
Michael Bernstein@mbernst.bsky.social · 8mo agoOur new article in @science.org enables social media reranking outside of platforms' walled gardens. We add an LLM-powered reranking of highly polarizing political content into N=1256 participants' feeds. Downranking cools tensions with the opposite party—but upranking inflames them.
This was such a cool experiment that I created a Zentropi labeler with a simplified version of the authors' Partisan Animosity criteria. Now anyone can experiment directly with using this labeler to try to reduce the temperature of affective polarization in their feeds. zentropi.ai/labelers/b30...
Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization
Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used thi...
science.org
Michael Bernstein@mbernst.bsky.social · 8mo agoOur new article in @science.org enables social media reranking outside of platforms' walled gardens. We add an LLM-powered reranking of highly polarizing political content into N=1256 participants' feeds. Downranking cools tensions with the opposite party—but upranking inflames them.
New paper in Science: In a platform-independent field experiment, we show that reranking content expressing antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity in social media feeds alters affective polarization. 🧵
Our new article in @science.org enables social media reranking outside of platforms' walled gardens. We add an LLM-powered reranking of highly polarizing political content into N=1256 participants' feeds. Downranking cools tensions with the opposite party—but upranking inflames them.
Current CASBS fellow Jeanne Tsai & fmr fellow @mbernst.bsky.social among coauthors of NEW ARTICLE @science.org unveiling a new method to reduce exposure to highly partisan social media posts & improve users’ attitudes Coverage: news.stanford.edu/stories/2025... Pub: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization
Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used thi...
science.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 🧵👇
Stanford Engineering (@StanfordEng) launched an open-rank faculty search in design. It can place candidates in any department in our School of Engineering: facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49... I'm thrilled to bring in more colleagues at the intersection of engineering+design!
Stanford | Faculty Positions: Details - Open Rank Faculty Position in School of Engineering, Design
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Thank you to everyone for your energy and enthusiasm in joining this adventure with me so far!
Thrilled to share that I’ve successfully defended my PhD dissertation and I will be joining MIT as an Assistant Professor starting Fall 2026, with a shared appointment between Sloan and EECS! I will be recruiting 1-2 PhD students this upcoming cycle. Consider applying to MIT EECS!
Very cool to see this research developed into a policy brief! Impactful work from a superstar team: @joon-s-pk.bsky.social @cqzou.bsky.social @aaronshaw.bsky.social @mako.cc Carrie Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris, @robbwiller.bsky.social Percy Liang, @mbernst.bsky.social
Stanford HAI@stanfordhai.bsky.social · last yr.AI agents that can simulate human behaviors and attitudes can help test ideas in social science. Our latest brief introduces a generative AI agent architecture that simulates the attitudes of 1,000+ real people. Read more: hai.stanford.edu/policy/simul...
Take a 👀 at this policy brief from @stanfordhai.bsky.social on how AI agents can test ideas in social science. Honored to be part of this amazing team: @joon-s-pk.bsky.social @cqzou.bsky.social @aaronshaw.bsky.social @mako.cc Carrie Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris, Percy Liang, @mbernst.bsky.social
Stanford HAI@stanfordhai.bsky.social · last yr.AI agents that can simulate human behaviors and attitudes can help test ideas in social science. Our latest brief introduces a generative AI agent architecture that simulates the attitudes of 1,000+ real people. Read more: hai.stanford.edu/policy/simul...
A policy brief on what generative AI simulations of people might be good for! (based on work with the amazing team of @joon-s-pk.bsky.social @cqzou.bsky.social @mako.cc @robbwiller.bsky.social @mbernst.bsky.social Merrie Morris, Carrie Cai, and Percy Liang)
Stanford HAI@stanfordhai.bsky.social · last yr.AI agents that can simulate human behaviors and attitudes can help test ideas in social science. Our latest brief introduces a generative AI agent architecture that simulates the attitudes of 1,000+ real people. Read more: hai.stanford.edu/policy/simul...
📣 Calling all #CHI2025 attendees who work with human participants: Join our panel discussion on #LLM, #simulation, #syntheticdata, and the future of human subjects research on Apr 30 (Wed), 2:10 - 3:40 PM (JP Time) Post your questions for panelists here: forms.gle/m2mXY3xFafAX...
Should we use LLMs 🤖 to simulate human research subjects 🧑? In our new preprint, we argue sims can augment human studies to scale up social science as AI technology accelerates. We identify 5 tractable challenges and argue this is a promising and underused research method 🧪🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2504.02234
LLM Social Simulations Are a Promising Research Method
Accurate and verifiable large language model (LLM) simulations of human research subjects promise an accessible data source for understanding human behavior and training new AI systems. However, resul...
arxiv.org
This might be the most useful thing I have come across in social media - a personalized feed of academic papers filtered by your follower network! Highly recommend. #academicsky
Nikhil Garg@nkgarg.bsky.social · last yr.*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...
Step 1) Install the #chi2025 module to your Claude/ChatGPT: knollapp.com/add/ZlRKvCmB... Step 2) Ask the LLM, "Given my interests, what are some CHI 2025 papers I should check out?" (If the model doesn't already know your interests, you might need to state them.)
New funding opportunity for Wikimedia-related research! Grants up to $150K available. Apply by April 16th: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:...
Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research & Technology Fund/Wikimedia Research Fund - Meta
meta.wikimedia.org
Book announcement: with Melissa Valentine, we are publishing "Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work." It's a leadership book synthesizing a decade of Stanford research on how computing, online platforms, and AI reshape teamwork. Coming October from @mitpress.bsky.social!
It was great to see so many attendees at the seminar from Michael Bernstein on Friday. Thanks for visiting, @mbernst.bsky.social. The recording of "Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior" is available at the web page below. @kenholstein.bsky.social @bradamyers.bsky.social
CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute@hcii.cmu.edu · last yr.Our next #HCIISeminarSeries talk & Sujeath Pareddy Memorial Lecture will be Michael Bernstein @mbernst.bsky.social of Stanford University. 🎙️"Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior" 📅 Feb. 28, 2025 🕜1:30pm ET 📍NSH 1305 + livestream 🔗 Details: hcii.cmu.edu/news/event/2...
Our next #HCIISeminarSeries talk & Sujeath Pareddy Memorial Lecture will be Michael Bernstein @mbernst.bsky.social of Stanford University. 🎙️"Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior" 📅 Feb. 28, 2025 🕜1:30pm ET 📍NSH 1305 + livestream 🔗 Details: hcii.cmu.edu/news/event/2...
HCII Seminar Series - Michael Bernstein | Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Michael Bernstein is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he is a Bass University Fellow and Interim Director of the Symbolic Systems program. His research focuses ...
hcii.cmu.edu
Weiser (2025)—Sal awakens: she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock had quietly asked "coffee?", and she had mumbled "OK." Her Alexa alarm clock did its best with the mumbled response: "Playing OK Go." Sal cried out: "Alexa, stop!" The assistant leered at her. "Alexa. Alexa! ALEXA!"
The move to use LLMs to enforce platform codes of conduct is going to expose all the intentional vagueness in the policies. LLMs can certainly enforce what is written in the policies, but I bet it’s going to yield a bunch of undesired changes to enforcement patterns.
Applications to the Stanford Symbolic Systems lecturer position is due on the 15th. If you're interested in teaching and mentoring careers in academia, consider applying!
Michael Bernstein@mbernst.bsky.social · 2y agoStanford's Symbolic Systems Program is hiring a three-year lecturer position: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/program/...
📣 The #CSCW2026 deadline (@acm-cscw.bsky.social) has been posted. Big change this year. There is **only one deadline** for 2026 and it is May 13, 2025. 📣 Please spread the word! #CSCW #CHI #HCI #socialcomputing cscw.acm.org/2025/index.p...
CALL FOR PAPERS – CSCW 2025
cscw.acm.org
I thoroughly enjoy reading this methods paper by McGrath (1981) www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/52... He views the research process as not a set of problems that need to be solved but dilemmas that need to be lived with. There is not "one true" method free of limitations; all are flawed in dif ways
How do people *really* read Wikipedia? 📖 👀 We explored how readers navigate, fall into rabbit holes, and engage with information in a chapter for the ‘Handbook of Computational Social Science,’ edited by @tahayasseri.bsky.social. Stay tuned for the full book! 📚 Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00939
Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program is hiring a three-year lecturer position: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/program/...
Stanford University, Symbolic Systems Program
Full service online faculty recruitment and application management system for academic institutions worldwide. We offer unique solutions tailored for academic communities.
academicjobsonline.org
