Thrilled to share that I am joining UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in the School of Information! I start in Fall 2027, and I am recruiting PhD students this cycle. List me in your application if you want to work with me! More on what I'm looking for (and a form to indicate interest) 🧵

Another excellent post (from @sayash.bsky.social and @randomwalker.bsky.social) on questions to ask about announcements of AI capabilities. I highly recommend their newsletter! www.normaltech.ai/p/did-google...

Did Google’s AI agents really build an operating system for $916?

The importance of independent evaluation

normaltech.ai

New from @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social: Responding to AI risks requires building broad resilience to harms through normal policymaking, rather than allowing the executive branch to exert extraordinary power over AI access and development. knightcolumbia.org/blog/do-ai-r...

Do AI Risks Require Extraordinary Government Intervention?

knightcolumbia.org

New Trump EO is expected to "ask" AI cos to submit frontier models for agency review in advance of release. Here's a new essay--just published--by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social about whether AI risks require extraordinary government intervention. knightcolumbia.org/blog/do-ai-r...

Do AI Risks Require Extraordinary Government Intervention?

knightcolumbia.org

A silly little comic based on the opening section of AI Snake Oil by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social.

Advanced AI will not automatically help consumers achieve desired legal outcomes at lower costs. Justin Curl, @sayash.bsky.social, & @randomwalker.bsky.social identify three bottlenecks that stand between AI capability advances and more accessible legal services in the latest Lawfare Research paper.

AI Won’t Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper

Three bottlenecks between AI capability and access to justice.

lawfaremedia.org

(1/4) Ever wondered what tech policy might look like if it were informed by research on collective intelligence and complex systems? 🧠🧑‍💻 Join @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @lukethorburn.com, and myself in San Diego on Aug 4th for the Collective Intelligence x Tech Policy workshop at @acmci.bsky.social!

New commentary in @nature.com from professor Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social) & PhD candidate Sayash Kapoor (@sayash.bsky.social) about the risks of rapid adoption of AI in science - read: "Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science" 🔗 #CITP #AI #science #AcademiaSky

Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science

Without clear protocols to catch errors, artificial intelligence’s growing role in science could do more harm than good.

nature.com

In a new essay from our "Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms" series, @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social make the case for thinking of #AI as normal technology, instead of superintelligence. Read here: knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...

AI as Normal Technology

knightcolumbia.org

“The rush to adopt AI has consequences. As its use proliferates…some degree of caution and introspection is warranted.” In a comment for @nature.com, @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social warn against an overreliance on AI-driven modeling in science: bit.ly/4icM0hp

Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science

Without clear protocols to catch errors, artificial intelligence’s growing role in science could do more harm than good.

bit.ly

Science is not collection of findings. Progress happens through theories.As we move from findings to theories things r less amenable to automation. Proliferation of scientific findings based on AI hasn't accelerated—& might even have inhibited—higher levels of progress www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science

Without clear protocols to catch errors, artificial intelligence’s growing role in science could do more harm than good.

nature.com

I spent a few hours with OpenAI's Operator automating expense reports. Most corporate jobs require filing expenses, so Operator could save *millions* of person-hours every year if it gets this right. Some insights on what worked, what broke, and why this matters for the future of agents 🧵

Excellent post discussing whether "AI progress is slowing down". www.aisnakeoil.com/p/is-ai-prog... And if you're not subscribed to @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social 's great newsletter, what are you waiting for?

Is AI progress slowing down?

Making sense of recent technology trends and claims

aisnakeoil.com

Excited to share that AI Snake Oil is one of Nature's 10 best books of 2024! www.nature.com/articles/d41... The whole first chapter is available online: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... We hope you find it useful.

More than 60 countries held elections this year. Many researchers and journalists claimed AI misinformation would destabilize democracies. What impact did AI really have? We analyzed every instance of political AI use this year collected by WIRED. New essay w/@random_walker: 🧵

My wife noticed an article with my name on it in her feed and said “Did you write this? It doesn’t sound like you.” I was surprised to see an alarmist headline attributed to me and @sayash.bsky.social by Wired: “Human Misuse Will Make Artificial Intelligence More Dangerous”

Misinformation is not an AI problem. @sayash.bsky.social and @randomwalker.bsky.social highlight that "while generative AI reduces the cost of creating misinformation, it does not reduce the cost of distributing it". Always worth reading them. substack.com/app-link/pos...

We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation is not an AI Problem.

Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.

substack.com

Is artificial intelligence supercharging the problem of political misinformation? In a word: no. New from @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social at @knightcolumbia.org. knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-look...

We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation Is Not an AI Problem.

knightcolumbia.org

“Fixes to the information environment depend on structural and institutional changes rather than on curbing AI-generated content.” @sayash.bsky.social & @randomwalker.bsky.social find that AI hasn’t "fundamentally changed the landscape of political misinformation”: knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-look...

We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation Is Not an AI Problem.

knightcolumbia.org

AI amplifying biorisk has been a major focus in AI policy & governance work. Is the spotlight merited? Our recent cross-institutional work asks: Does the available evidence match the current level of attention? 📜 arxiv.org/abs/2412.01946

🚨 [AI BOOK CLUB] "AI Snake Oil: What AI Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference" by @randomwalker.bsky.social & @sayash.bsky.social is a MUST-READ for everyone interested in AI, and it's our 🎉 15th selected book: 📖 About the book:

I have a new piece out with @aisvarya17.bsky.social in @columjournreview.bsky.social in which we test how OpenAI's new search feature surfaces and attributes news content. Our findings were not promising for news publishers (1/9) www.cjr.org/tow_center/h...

How ChatGPT (Mis)represents Publisher Content

ChatGPT search — which is positioned as a competitor to search engines like Google and Bing — launched with a press release from OpenAI touting claims that the company had “collaborated extensively wi...

cjr.org

New short paper on the limits of one type of inference scaling, by @benediktstroebl.bsky.social @sayash.bsky.social & me. The first page has the main findings and message. (The title is a play on Inference Scaling Laws.) More on the limits of inference scaling coming soon. arxiv.org/abs/2411.17501

Current read. Very informative so far. Not quite in the way most folks I engage with would expect. I knew predictive AI was bad but I did not know just how bad it is. Or how much government and corporations use it and screw up lives in the process.

Don't leave the future of AI to the tech companies. The authors of AI Snake Oil cut through the hype of AI-bullshit. Not to neglect the good stuff but in order to make the reader aware of the (snake)pits of overselling the technology. @sayash.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-l... #skolechat

Don't leave the future of AI to the tech companies

Book review: Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor, AI Snake Oil. What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't and How to Tell the Difference.

linkedin.com

Another banger just picked up from my local library: @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social on "AI Snake Oil".

Dirk Eddelbuettel@eddelbuettel.com · 2y ago

Unironically, the local library notified me the day after the election that my 'hold' for "Character Limit" was in. Made for very interesting reading. Conger and Mac stop in the summer of 2024, with a meeting by TFG and Musk described in the epilogoue. We are in a for a ride. Good book, recommend.

I have recently read the book "AI Snake Oil" by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social. Before buying it, I expected it to be the best book I'd read on AI, it most definitely is. I heartily endorse it to anyone wanting to find out what AI is all about and see what is real and what is hype

This book was surprisingly good! Excited to go to this.

Sayash Kapoor@sayash.bsky.social · 2y ago

Folks in San Francisco: my AI Snake Oil book talk is *today* at 5:30pm at Book Passage (SF ferry building). Come through to discuss the future of AI, why AI isn't an existential risk, how we can build AI in/for the public, and what goes into writing a book. Looking forward to seeing some of you!

Folks in San Francisco: my AI Snake Oil book talk is *today* at 5:30pm at Book Passage (SF ferry building). Come through to discuss the future of AI, why AI isn't an existential risk, how we can build AI in/for the public, and what goes into writing a book. Looking forward to seeing some of you!