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Andrea Baronchelli

@baronca.bsky.social

1.5K followers 70 following 75 posts

Decentralised networks of humans and machines https://www.andreabaronchelli.com/

www.andreabaronchelli.com

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

New paper alert. "More is different" & the LLMs.
LLMs are usually studied in isolation. But what happens when they start interacting? We explored this by looking at their collective behaviour.
Work with @ariel-flint.bsky.social and @lajello.bsky.social
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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Fil Menczer @fil.bsky.social · 2d

Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran

cyberscoop.com/citizen-lab-...

Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran

The group leveraged dozens of social media accounts and “routinely used” AI-generated imagery and video to stoke unrest among Iran’s population, according to Citizen Lab.

cyberscoop.com

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Sune Lehmann @sunelehmann.com · 17d

It was a ton of fun to play a small role in this project lead by the brilliant Marta Ewa Lech & @jonassjuul.bsky.social. A lot of drama & change in the world of music reflected in the song-dynamics of the Billboard Hot 100!

Jonas L Juul @jonassjuul.bsky.social · 17d

New paper out in EPJ Data Science!

We analyze 65 years of Billboard Hot 100 data to ask:

🎵Are songs moving differently up and down the chart nowadays?
📉 Are hits shorter-lived?
📈 Or do superstars dominate more than ever?

Paper: epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10....
🧵 1/7

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Sep 2

There are two ways to deal with LLMs in our work

One is the path of abundance: automate everything and multiply publications at the expense of quality

The other is the path of focusing on the soul of the work, on the questions that still matter - to you - when everything else has been made trivial

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · Aug 11

Breaking: the court ruling in Wikipedia's legal challenge to the Online Safety Act categorisation regime has just been handed down. The court dismissed Wikipedia's challenge. This is bad. This is very bad. wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/08...

Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations – Wikimedia Foundation

UPDATE: On Monday, 11 August, the High Court of Justice dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. While the decision does not provi...

wikimediafoundation.org

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Arianna Pera @ariannapera.bsky.social · Jul 23

Presented our work, “Cultural and Cognitive Insights from 2.6 Billion Drawings,” at @ic2s2.bsky.social this morning. Big thanks to Mauro Martino, Nima Dehmamy, @douglasguilbeault.bsky.social, @lajello.bsky.social, and @baronca.bsky.social for the collaboration ✨

Stay tuned for more results!

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jul 7

Looking forward to it!

LANET @lanetconference.bsky.social · Jul 4

We are more than happy to announce that @baronca.bsky.social (University of London), an absolute authority on the study of decentralized networks of humans and machines, will be present as a speaker at @lanetconference.bsky.social!

#ComplexSystems #LANET2025
Uruguay lanet2025.uy

Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Gianmarco De Francisci Morales @gdfm.bsky.social · Jul 2

🚨Are moral judgements biased by the gender of the subject?
We find *no* direct effect when looking at Reddit!

Our causal study design is based on carefully matching similar situations that people with different genders experience (and share).

Study led by @loreb92.bsky.social

rdcu.be/eumlQ

Moral judgments in online discourse are not biased by gender

Scientific Reports - Moral judgments in online discourse are not biased by gender

rdcu.be

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jul 1

This may be useful to understand the complex systems concepts used in the paper, including coordination and (spontaneous) emergence royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

The emergence of consensus: a primer | Royal Society Open Science

The origin of population-scale coordination has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. Recently, game theory, evolutionary approaches and complex systems science have provided quantitative...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · Jun 3

Our preprint “How Malicious AI Swarms Can Threaten Democracy” is now online.

We show how coordinated multi-agent LLM swarms can infiltrate communities, craft synthetic grassroots “consensus,” and erode institutional trust—and what we can do now to stop it.

osf.io/preprints/os...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jun 25

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance

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Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology - Nature

An analysis of research papers and citing patents indicates the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.

www.nature.com

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 26

At #ICWSM? Here's a starter pack for you :)
bsky.app/starter-pack...

Check also "Bootstrapping Social Networks: Lessons from Bluesky Starter Packs" ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 24

Questions: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.23796

arxiv.org

Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 24

Original paper www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations

Groups of AI agents can develop social conventions, generate societal bias, and undergo critical mass dynamics in norm adoption.

www.science.org

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 24

A brief follow-up on the complex systems foundations of our LLM population study, sparked by ongoing debate. And why they matter for studying AI collectives more broadly.
arxiv.org/abs/2506.18600
With @ariel-flint.bsky.social and @lajello.bsky.social

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Leo Balduf @leobalduf.bsky.social · Jun 21

Our work on Bluesky: doi.org/10.1609/icws...

Joint work with
@bibo7086.bsky.social
@harnen.bsky.social
@garethtyson.bsky.social
@asonur.bsky.social
@ignactro.bsky.social
@baronca.bsky.social

Bootstrapping Social Networks: Lessons from Bluesky Starter Packs | Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

doi.org

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 10

Average day in AI discourse:
- The big tech paper saying LLMs are harmless toys,
- The influencer claiming LLMs are an existential threat.

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · Jun 4

👇👇👇

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · Jun 3

The combination of #artificialintelligence and #socialmedia poses a threat to democracy.

Our new paper explains how AI swarms can fabricate grassroots consensus, fragment shared reality, engage in mass harassment, interfer with elections, and erode institutional trust: osf.io/preprints/os...

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Reposted by Andrea Baronchelli

Rob Noble @robjohnnoble.bsky.social · May 18

Only two weeks left to apply!

Rob Noble @robjohnnoble.bsky.social · May 6

My department is hiring! Permanent faculty job (research + teaching) in applied maths. Mathematical biology would be highly appropriate. We're a friendly department in a large university in central London, recently merged with a big medical school. Apply by 1st June. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMY889/l...

Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at City St George’s, University of London

Apply for the Lecturer in Applied Mathematics role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

www.jobs.ac.uk

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 18

Nice summary of our latest paper. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI language models develop social norms like groups of people

When LLMs are grouped together, they exhibit similar characteristics to human societies.

www.nature.com

Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 16

Thanks!

Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

Populations are homogeneous (i.e., Claude agents interacted only with Claude agents etc). We used different models to check for robustness across models, and results were indeed robust.

Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

Thanks Rob!

Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations

Groups of AI agents can develop social conventions, generate societal bias, and undergo critical mass dynamics in norm adoption.

www.science.org

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

Also, AI societies are no longer theoretical. They are already emerging and intertwining with human societies. Just think of social media today.

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Andrea Baronchelli @baronca.bsky.social · May 15

Why does this matter?
Even if individual agents appear safe, their group behaviour can diverge in unexpected and misaligned ways. AI alignment cannot stop at the individual level. We need to start looking at AI populations.

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