Sander van der Linden

Anthropic boss rejects Pentagon demand to drop AI safeguards Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth previously threatened to remove the firm from the department's supply chain.

Anthropic CEO rejects Pentagon demands to drop AI safeguards.

“We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

100%

And we need regulation to enforce safety-by-design feeds for kids for sure I think! We need strong enforcement of appropriate regulation but I'm just not sure if bans are the answer - there's very little evidence of their efficacy and they take away all autonomy maybe better used a temp lever.

Social media bans for teens lack evidence Nature Health - Online harms are an urgent societal challenge, but governments should prepare teenagers to responsibly use digital technology.

Yes here ungated rdcu.be/e5Eft

Yes indeed both the research we have says they don’t have the desired effect but also we don’t have very much high quality research on it. I’d love to see more large scale population trials in schools.

Interesting points!

Exactly

(3) We can't hide from technology, but instead of restricting kids' autonomy, we need to make the companies pay by forcing safe feeds and building digital resilience.

Despite all the chatter, social media bans for teens lack evidence! New paper out in Nature Health.

(1) Harms from social media are real & serious.

(2) We need regulatory action but bans are not nuanced, do not empower youth, & are not supported by evidence.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture - Communications Psychology The rush to study generative AI is producing a feedback loop of topical and methodological convergence, flattening scientific imagination and crowding out the pluralism needed to keep research adaptiv...

This paper argues that the rush to study gen AI has led researchers to focus on the same topics and rely on the same methods. As a result, creativity is limited and the diversity of ideas needed to keep research flexible, strong, and innovative is being pushed aside.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

We have a new paper out on how the AI boom is creating a scientific monoculture! Everything AI.

"The task for social science is to ensure that, in navigating this moment, we do not become artificial ourselves."

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Led by the brilliant @cecilietraberg.bsky.social

New article in Nature describes a field experiment on X which shows that assigning users to an algorithmic feed pushes conservative content and demotes mainstream news.

Sounds obvious but important in light of prior claims algorithms don't cause attitudinal changes.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks so much for the careful translation and referencing!

Very cool to receive the Japanese edition of the Psychology of Misinformation!

People form beliefs not only as individual agents, but as members of social groups.

Children (4-6 years old) who belonged to a group were more convinced by evidence that supported their ingroup’s belief (and were less convinced by evidence that opposed their ingroup): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Important message today from Hillary Clinton at the World Forum on Democracy.

“The autocrats attack academia and media because they are potential sources of truth and fact”.

The Matrix of Coordinated Influence. Traditional frameworks for analyzing online influence focus on the distinction between human and automated actors (Identity Axis) or between spontaneous and coordinated behavior (Articulation Axis). Bot Nets (top-left) rely on synthetic identities and automated scripts. Troll Farms (bottom-left) use human operators to manage fake personas. Grassroots Action (bottom-right) involves verified citizens sharing self-authored views. Cyborg Propaganda (top-right) represents a new paradigm: verified human users disseminating centrally generated, algorithmically generated narratives, effectively ‘hybridizing’ the authenticity of the grassroots with the scale of the botnet.

The distinction between grassroots activism and automated influence is collapsing.

We typically worry about "bot farms" or "troll factories." But a distinct, more complex threat is emerging. We call it "Cyborg Propaganda."

LLMs need immunization to protect against misinformation!

New out in The Lancet Digital Health with the brill @yarakyrychenko.bsky.social where we argue that AI systems should be inoculated against misinformation!

We offer three broad ways to inoculate LLMs

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Inoculating against anti-vax messaging through empathy Vaccine hesitancy can be overcome through personalised, empathetic conversational approaches.,,,European Commission

Nice writeup of our now-finished JITSUVAX project: cordis.europa.eu/art... The main output of the project is the empathetic refutational interview...
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He struck me as an extreme sceptic and cynic so that description doesn’t really resonate with me but I didn’t know him very well so I guess he could be but his mind didn’t really strike me as the gullible kind.

But Epstein’s conviction was already long public by then. The counter-intelligence required here would have been a simple google search…

Yes I mean for one of the world’s foremost intellectuals to claim “I didn’t do my research” is a hard pill to swallow. All so disappointing.

Official Statement From Valeria Chomsky Regarding Jeffrey Epstein As many are aware, my husband, Noam Chomsky, now 97, is confronting significant  health challenges after suffering a devastating stroke in June 2023.

Noam Chomsky’s wife responds to the Epstein friendship. I’m a little disappointed the basic answer is just “we didn’t do our research”. znetwork.org/znetarticle/...

There have been increasingly shrill accusations against the EU over its digital legislation, based on accusations of "censorship" by defenders of "free speech" -- including, so it appears, the right to peddle an AI app that seemingly produces child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
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It's disturbing to see many of the the major figures in moral cognition all over the Epstein files

He was friendly with a huge number of the leading figures in the field, including giving millions to their labs, long after he pled guilty to sexually abusing young girls
www.justice.gov/epstein

The University of Cambridge has an exciting Assistant, Associate, and Full Professorship of Public Policy open in the new Bennett School of Public Policy. It's a fantastic group with great people, they have a focus on digital policy too! Area open.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/term/De...

Here’s what @profsanderlinden.bsky.social has to say about my forthcoming book, Energy is Life. Thank you, Prof!

Released on Feb 3rd.

Pre-order a paperback or e-book in Europe >
amzn.eu/d/3UKW65E

Everywhere else >
www.amazon.com/Energy-Life-...

We are pleased to announce that a keynote speaker for the April Cambridge Disinformation Summit is 2001 Nobel Economist, Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz. Professor Stiglitz is a University Professor, teaching at the Columbia Business School, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics, and the School of International and Public Affairs. Professor Stiglitz will discuss systemic economic risks from disinformation and from platforms that amplify or monetize disinformation. The Summit is hosted by the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, The Psychometrics Centre - University of Cambridge, the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, and the Cambridge Judge Business School Centre for Financial Reporting & Accountability.

We are pleased to announce that a keynote speaker for the April Cambridge Disinformation Summit is 2001 Nobel Economist, Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Professor Stiglitz will discuss systemic economic risks from disinformation and from platforms that amplify or monetize disinformation.

@profsanderlinden.bsky.social and I debunked this narrative a while ago.

I have trained and evaluated jet pilots and there is no evidence to support this rage bait.

Our article is linked here:

www.promarket.org/2024/02/06/h...

This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks. The practical consequence of respondents' failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong: The detention of an alien is extended, or an alien who should remain in Minnesota is flown to Texas, or an alien who has been flown to Texas is released there and told to figure out a way to get home. This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.' Respondents have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward. Unfortunately, though, the violations continue. The Court's patience is at an end. Accordingly, the Court will order Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE, to appear personally before the Court and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of Court. The Court acknowledges that ordering the

head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step, but the extent of ICE's violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed. ORDER Based on the foregoing, and on all of the files, records, and proceedings herein, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT: 1. The Court will hold a hearing on Friday, January 30, 2026, at 1:00 pm in Courtroom 15 (MPLS) before Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz. Respondent Todd Lyons must appear in person to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for violating the Court's January 14, 2026, order. Petitioner's counsel may participate in the hearing, but his attendance is not required. If, before the hearing, the parties file a stipulation indicating that petitioner has been released from custody, the Court will cancel the hearing and will not require Lyons to appear. Dated: January 26, 2026 Is/ Patrick J. Schiltz Patrick J. Schiltz, Chief Judge United States District Court

BREAKING: Chief Judge Schiltz sets a contempt hearing for Friday in one of the hundreds of habeas cases in Minnesota pending as a result of Operation Metro Surge, ordering acting ICE Director Todd Lyons personally to appear in court and face contempt. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...