Chris Bail
@chrisbail.bsky.social
Duke Professor directing https://scai.duke.edu, https://sicss.io & https://polarizationlab.com. Author of Breaking the Social Media Prism.
Seats have opened up at Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI today! Come join us to hear Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, Kaamna Bhojwani, and many more: sites.duke.edu/scai/schedule/
February 13, 2026 at 2:11 PM
Seats have opened up at Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI today! Come join us to hear Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, Kaamna Bhojwani, and many more: sites.duke.edu/scai/schedule/
What better way to kick off Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI than a killer talk by Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) followed by an amazing student panel on topics from empathy to economic development.
February 12, 2026 at 7:50 PM
What better way to kick off Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI than a killer talk by Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) followed by an amazing student panel on topics from empathy to economic development.
Only two days until #SCAI2026: our annual Conference on Society-Centered AI at Duke. Can't wait to hear amazing talks by Arvind Narayanan, Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, and so many more! sites.duke.edu/scai/
February 10, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Only two days until #SCAI2026: our annual Conference on Society-Centered AI at Duke. Can't wait to hear amazing talks by Arvind Narayanan, Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, and so many more! sites.duke.edu/scai/
How can we create new benchmarks to measure the social impact of AI? More than 185 people registered to participate in our second annual society-centered AI hackathon at Duke last weekend-- I've never felt more confident that the future is bright!
February 9, 2026 at 4:24 PM
How can we create new benchmarks to measure the social impact of AI? More than 185 people registered to participate in our second annual society-centered AI hackathon at Duke last weekend-- I've never felt more confident that the future is bright!
Fascinated by #Moltbook? The Duke Polarization Lab has been studying how humans interact with large groups of bots simulating humans for the past three years, and we've learned a lot. For example, this forthcoming paper in AJPS documents how a "spiral of toxicity" unfolds: osf.io/preprints/os...
February 5, 2026 at 3:54 PM
Fascinated by #Moltbook? The Duke Polarization Lab has been studying how humans interact with large groups of bots simulating humans for the past three years, and we've learned a lot. For example, this forthcoming paper in AJPS documents how a "spiral of toxicity" unfolds: osf.io/preprints/os...
Interested in #Moltbook? Social scientists have been studying whether LLMs can simulate entire social media platforms for some time. 2.5 years ago we published the paper below, and there have been dozens of studies since then which I reviewed last year in this piece: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
February 4, 2026 at 8:07 PM
Interested in #Moltbook? Social scientists have been studying whether LLMs can simulate entire social media platforms for some time. 2.5 years ago we published the paper below, and there have been dozens of studies since then which I reviewed last year in this piece: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
We are hiring a post-doc to study the impact of AI agents on complex social systems in Duke's Society-Centered AI Initiative and/or the Polarization Lab! Apply here:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/314...
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/314...
January 13, 2026 at 2:01 PM
We are hiring a post-doc to study the impact of AI agents on complex social systems in Duke's Society-Centered AI Initiative and/or the Polarization Lab! Apply here:
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/314...
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/314...
Dr. Nicholas Christakis (@nachristakis.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026 Feb 12-14th! Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/
January 8, 2026 at 2:11 PM
Dr. Nicholas Christakis (@nachristakis.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026 Feb 12-14th! Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/
Rest in peace, Perspective API
January 7, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Rest in peace, Perspective API
Dr. Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026! Join us Feb 12-14 at Duke for industry and academic keynotes, research spotlight talks, and poster sessions. Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/
January 7, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Dr. Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026! Join us Feb 12-14 at Duke for industry and academic keynotes, research spotlight talks, and poster sessions. Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/
1/ 🚨 Big news 🚨 today we’re launching Tech for Open Minds (TOM) at @DukeU— a global program exploring how technology shapes open-mindedness, humility & polarization 🌍🧠
🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18
🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18
August 29, 2025 at 4:06 PM
1/ 🚨 Big news 🚨 today we’re launching Tech for Open Minds (TOM) at @DukeU— a global program exploring how technology shapes open-mindedness, humility & polarization 🌍🧠
🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18
🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18
It's #SICSS O'clock!!!! Hundreds of students all over the world are learning about computational social science *for free* thanks to the hard work of so many brilliant young scholars who dedicated their time this summer to train the next generation-- from Colombia to Kenya! sicss.io
June 20, 2025 at 3:37 PM
I had the great honor to award Yann leCun Duke's inaugural "Distinguished Lectureship in Society-Centered AI" last week. One of my favorite parts of his lecture was his argument that one of the greatest risks of future AI models is that they may not be built by a diverse enough group of people.
March 14, 2025 at 3:05 PM
I had the great honor to award Yann leCun Duke's inaugural "Distinguished Lectureship in Society-Centered AI" last week. One of my favorite parts of his lecture was his argument that one of the greatest risks of future AI models is that they may not be built by a diverse enough group of people.
Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here: sicss.io/locations
February 24, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here: sicss.io/locations
Want to hear dozens of amazing AI research talks, develop new interdisciplinary conversations as part of Duke's new Society-Centered AI initiative, or participate in our organization's first hackathon? Check out our www.responsibleaisymposium.com February 28-March 3rd.
February 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Want to hear dozens of amazing AI research talks, develop new interdisciplinary conversations as part of Duke's new Society-Centered AI initiative, or participate in our organization's first hackathon? Check out our www.responsibleaisymposium.com February 28-March 3rd.
Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.
February 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.
The National Science Foundation has now instructed all researchers to pause new purchases now too :(
January 29, 2025 at 2:17 AM
The National Science Foundation has now instructed all researchers to pause new purchases now too :(
Peak polarization discourse?
December 10, 2024 at 2:57 PM
Peak polarization discourse?
Do podcasts play a decisive role in politics? This fascinating new paper maps the ecosystem using a large database of podcast transcripts from 2020. My first take away: politics is dwarfed by entertainment (not unlike social media): arxiv.org/pdf/2411.07892
November 15, 2024 at 2:26 PM
Do podcasts play a decisive role in politics? This fascinating new paper maps the ecosystem using a large database of podcast transcripts from 2020. My first take away: politics is dwarfed by entertainment (not unlike social media): arxiv.org/pdf/2411.07892
Several days before the election, a paper was posted that employed GPT 4-o to predict the election outcome via data from the American National Election Study. It produced this electoral map (below). See arxiv.org/pdf/2411.01582
November 8, 2024 at 7:44 PM
Several days before the election, a paper was posted that employed GPT 4-o to predict the election outcome via data from the American National Election Study. It produced this electoral map (below). See arxiv.org/pdf/2411.01582
🎶 “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done” 🎶
November 6, 2024 at 1:47 AM
🎶 “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done” 🎶
