Reading the Global Justice Report and this fact really blew my mind: because rich countries obtain higher returns on their foreign assets than what they pay on their foreign liabilities, there is a large transfer of wealth from poor to rich countries more than double the total flow of global aid 🤯

Interested in trade union organising? Come work with us at Oxford UCU! Application deadline 16 June. Branch Administrator and Organiser (permanent, full time) University and College Union, University of Oxford branch www.ucu.org.uk/vacancies#BAO1 @oxforducu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk #tradeunion #HE

Join us for Cognitive Science for Climate Change on May 26 at ENS Paris 🌍 Exploring how cognitive science and computational modelling can help us better understand climate action. Conveniently scheduled for those coming to Paris for #SBDM. 🎟️ More details: www.eventbrite.com/e/billets-co...

The lesson for all the students out there is that science is a community project. Most of us make individually small contributions to this project. Success is measured at the collective level. Many of our professional (and personal) dysfunctions could be fixed by more fully embracing this view.

We audited one of the most critical pieces of modern AI alignment: reward models. We find consistent and persistent biases and trace them back to the pretraining stage, challenging the premises of common approaches to alignment based on finetuning on human preferences. Accepted at #ICLR2026

Brian Christian@brianchristian.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Reward models (RMs) are supposed to represent human values. But RMs are NOT blank slates – they inherit measurable biases from their base models that stubbornly persist through preference training. #ICLR2026 🧵

Reward models (RMs) are supposed to represent human values. But RMs are NOT blank slates – they inherit measurable biases from their base models that stubbornly persist through preference training. #ICLR2026 🧵

"the academic alerted the University of the situation, and asked for protection as well as restrictive measures to be implemented. The University did not formally investigate the professor, and did not restrict his access to premises or remove his emeritus status." cherwell.org/2026/02/01/o...

Oxford University did not suspend professor investigated for rape - Cherwell

An emeritus professor at the Saïd Business School, who is also a fellow of an Oxford college, was investigated for rape by Thames Valley Police (TVP).

cherwell.org

once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions

Bluesky > X for science

Altmetric@altmetric.com · 7mo ago

Since Jan 1 2025, which feels like four trillion years ago, research has been shared on here 5 million whole-ass times. Bluesky recently passed 2 billion posts IN TOTAL. So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research. That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.

I'm voting YES on my UCU ballot for industrial action • to tell UCEA that I want negotiation, not imposition. • to call for the broken market system to change. • to call for decent pay, conditions, and job security for all university staff. #ucu @oxforducu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

When does new learning interfere with existing knowledge in people and ANNs? Great to have this out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com Work with @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @tsonj.bsky.social, Lukas Braun and Jan Grohn www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Humans and neural networks show similar patterns of transfer and interference during continual learning - Nature Human Behaviour

When learning new tasks, both humans and artificial neural networks face a trade-off between reusing prior knowledge to learn faster and avoiding the disruption of earlier learning. This study shows t...

nature.com

Eleanor Holton@eleanor-holton.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint out with @summerfieldlab.bsky.social! When does new learning interfere with existing knowledge? We compare continual learning in humans and artificial neural networks, revealing similar patterns of transfer & catastrophic interference (1/8) osf.io/preprints/ps...

Super happy to see this review out! We ask why people are so reluctant to abandon goals and how this commitment could be understood computationally. Work with Jill O'Reilly & @yaelniv.bsky.social

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Online Now: The adaptive value of stubborn goals

I'll be in Montreal October 26-27! Let me know if anyone wants to meet up!

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

I had an illuminating interaction with a colleague who said that they try to find time to do a few paper reviews per year. It made me realize that different researchers have widely varying expectations about reviewing, probably because there are no public norms.

In other news, I am now a ✨ COXI ✨ (cognitive scientist in Osnabrück, Germany) www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/campus-li... I'll be looking for PhD students & postdocs later this year, so watch this space if combining cognitive modelling, EEG & tFUS to study flexible cognition sounds exciting to you 🚀

New at the university: Prof. Weber!

Osnabrück University welcomes Prof. Dr. Lilian Weber! Since August 15, she has held the professorship "Cognitive Modeling" at the School of Human Sciences. A warm welcome!

uni-osnabrueck.de

I’m recruiting committee members for the Technical Program Committee at #CCN2026. Please apply if you want to help make submission, review & selection of contributed work (Extended Abstracts & Proceedings) more useful for everyone! 🌐 Helps to have: programming/communications/editorial experience.

Grace Lindsay@neurograce.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Fill out the form here to be involved in #CCN2026 tinyurl.com/ccn26committee And definitely fill out the #CCN2025 feedback form! tinyurl.com/ccn25partici...

PsyArXiv is seeking new moderators to help combat an increase in AI submissions! If you've ever posted a preprint to PsyArXiv, please consider joining. Minimum commitment 1h/month, there's a training session this Monday @ 1pm ET. More info here: forms.gle/9LB1rEtxHAeZ... #PsychSciSky

Expression of Interest in Serving as a PsyArXiv Moderator

As you might have heard, PsyArXiv is having some issues with an increase in low-quality submissions, ranging from AI generated manuscripts to inflate citation metrics, incoherent or nonsensical docume...

forms.gle

For no reason, I thought now might be a good moment to reshare my 2021 article arguing that the #CCN and #NeuroAI communities can avoid reinventing the wheel by building on existing philosophy of science about scientific progress and explanation. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.... #CCN2025

Forms of explanation and understanding for neuroscience and artificial intelligence | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society

Much of the controversy evoked by the use of deep neural networks as models of biological neural systems amount to debates over what constitutes scientific progress in neuroscience. To discuss what co...

journals.physiology.org

Check out this great summary of our satellite event on science for social good by @georgiaturner.bsky.social! ♥️ I also wrote up a transcript of my opening remarks thompsonj.github.io/CCN_for_soci... We are the gardeners of our scientific ecosystem. What will we grow?

Georgia Turner @georgiaturner.bsky.social · 12mo ago

@anne-urai.bsky.social , @weijima.bsky.social , Ili Ma and @tsonj.bsky.social organised an amazing workshop on 'Science for Social Good' at #CCN2025 @cogcompneuro.bsky.social We wrote a blog reflecting on it: anneurai.net/2025/08/14/r...

Blown away by Ellie Pavlick's talk at #CCN2025 about compositionality in transformers. More work like this at CCN please.

@davidpoeppel.bsky.social points out the elephant in the conference: whichever direction of the planet we look, things are bad. Einstein, chomsky and arendt point out to us that silence is not neutral 👏 #CCN2025

Inspiring quotes about the state of the world and our role in it as scientists at the beginning of David Poeppel's keynote at #CCN2025

If you are planning to attend #CCN2025 in Amsterdam next week and are interested in recurrent network models of decision making, please join our Satellite Workshop on Monday at 3pm. We'll have @summerfieldlab.bsky.social , @veronicachelu.bsky.social and many more! sites.google.com/view/rnnsmak...

RNNs making decisions

The goal of this CCN workshop is to host a scientific discussion on the study of decision-making using recurrent neural networks. The selected speakers will cover all aspects of decision-making, from ...

sites.google.com

Waiting for the train to Amsterdam for #CCN2025. Looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new connections. Hit me up if you want to chat about (modeling) collective intelligence, philosophy of science, communication, care, reward models, or the epistemic risks of scientific AI.

New preprint by William D'Alessandro and myself: The promise and peril of AI surrogacy in psychological research osf.io/preprints/ps...

In this world on fire, with misinformation, science and democracy under threat, how can scientists be a force for social good? This Monday in Amsterdam, join @weijima.bsky.social @tsonj.bsky.social Ili Ma + me for an interactive workshop as part of #CCN2025 anneurai.net/2025/05/05/c...

Scientists for social good: 2025 satellite event

We live in times when public trust in science is under threat, misinformation is rife, AI ethics are of increasing concern and climate change is increasingly affecting communities worldwide. How do…

anneurai.net

Jess Thompson@tsonj.bsky.social · last yr.

Are you planning to attend #CCN2025? Do you want to reflect on how to direct your skills and aptitudes to tackle today's most pressing social problems? Make sure you come to Amsterdam a day early to attend our satellite event on Science for Social Good. Register here: forms.gle/TFRCZYX2qfwD...

My first PhD paper - with @lhuntneuro.bsky.social and @summerfieldlab.bsky.social - is now out in @plosbiology.org! We ask: how do humans (and deep neural networks) navigate flexibly even in unfamiliar environments, such as a new city? Link: plos.io/45uSwNm 🧵 (1/6)

📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢 🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method. Please RT www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk