'The study...found that the main driver of increased red tape was university efficiency reforms. It threw doubt on the idea that increasing automation results in real efficiency, and suggested that Australian universities...had recently shifted towards stronger central executive management.' 1/2

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

🔈Job Alert! IAS is looking for a postdoctoral researcher as part of the Swedish Excellence Center in Computational Social Science -SWECSS.

⌛Deadline: September 30th
Apply 👉 liu.se/en/work-at-l...

#academicsky #css

This is exactly what doing AI-assisted research looks to me

My take on the NATO summit. Lots of unintended consequences with Europeans agreeing to something that few intend to deliver on. NATO ignoring its major challenge, fighting together as Europe with less US. That requires deep reforms, not vague spending pledges.
www.csis.org/analysis/nat...

Ketju vähemmän tunnettuista tilastoista Suomesta, vertailukohtana muut pohjoismaat.🧵

Aloitetaan verotuksen tasosta. Verotulot suhteessa BKT on Suomessa pohjoismaiden alhaisimmat. Tämä ei sisällä esim. eläkemaksuja ja muita sosiaalivakuutusmaksuja. 1/

AI is going to revolutionize the way in which things suck

The understudied dangers of anthropomorphic seduction - "While the AI industry directs much effort into improving the reasoning abilities of LLMs—with mixed results—the progress in communicative abilities remains underappreciated."
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We are hiring postdocs in Computational Social Science
📍SweCSS, Norrköping, Sweden
⏰Deadline June 3
🔗https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/26854
Please apply // help us spread the word

1. @alisongopnik.bsky.social, Cosma Shalizi, James Evans and myself have a new piece in Science on "AI" Large Models, pushing back against much of the collective wisdom about what they can and can't do. Official below, unpaywalled at henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod... . So why this now?

Currently reading Daniel Little's A New Social Ontology of Government (2020). Not a defense of bureaucracy, but maybe making it understandable. Basically just organizational sociology, but written by a philosopher, so might qualify. Uses the US government as an example, so feels timely.

Mutta on tässä kansalaistaidot kovilla kun miettii, onko Grok 2 tosiaan vastaillut näin:

www.tiktok.com/@zak.kimball...

BBC just released damning research on AI assistants' news accuracy.

Results: 51% of AI responses had significant issues. 19% introduced errors when citing BBC. 13% misquoted or made up BBC content entirely. 🤐🤐
www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/... via @ezraeeman.bsky.social

Oh.

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

www.programmablemutter.com/p/americas-p... I've a new piece on the Biden administration's plan to use export controls and the semiconductor chokepoint to shape the global AI system. Brief summarizing thread.

JUFO is doing its work.
deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/12/finl...

I tried to lose the metaphor of levels in sociological theory, but apparently, the journal lost the paper's abstract. doi.org/10.1007/s112...

Interesting, I got my paper accepted and I submitted the final non-anonymized version, surprise, 11 weeks ago. The paper is still waiting in the system with the status "Editor assigned". No response to multiple queries. Editorial assistants respond, but they forward the message to the editor.

New paper: Coupling social and ecological mechanisms with the Coleman boat
ecologyandsociety.org/vol29/iss4/a...

Anna-Mari Wallenberg avaa moniulotteisesta asiaa - tekoäly- ja digijuttuja säännellään eri asutuksissa ja direktiiveissä. Näiden tulkinta ja toimeenpano ovat kesken ja vaativat työtä. Eikä kristallipallo vielä kerro, miten tässä tullaan onnistumaan. www.datalit.fi/eun-digisaan...

Huge congratulations to Rodrigo Martínez Peña, who successfully defended his PhD thesis "Complex Causality. Bridging analytical sociology and social-ecological systems research"!

Excellent work, Dr. Martínez Peña🥂

A small team of these editors could, with a modest time investment and effectively no start-up budget, create an open access journal -- say, "Theories of Society" -- with the same editorial board and consulting editors.

Fundamentally, this is a collective action problem. It's solvable.