Babak Heydari

We are hiring a Postdoctoral Associate for the newly established ACT (Activate, Connect, Transform) Center at University of Rochester.

Let me know if you are interested in social networks, implementation #impsci, and action.

Please share in your networks!

In the language of #exploration/exploitation trade-offs in knowledge ecosystems: GenAI has taken over the exploitation side—transfer of existing knowledge; But the exploration side, where expertise deepens, and new knowledge emerges, remains active. 4/n
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

High-reputation, high-skill users stay engaged, but their roles are shifting—less novice Q&A, more expert-to-expert interactions. A potential silver lining: while #quantity declines, #quality may evolve in ways that sustain AI training data. 3/n

Our preprint (w/ Negin Maddah; link below) confirms the scale of decline via user-level analysis but reveals a key nuance: lower-skill, low-rep users disengaged, while high-skill, high-rep users remain active. (Figs. show both raw data & causal estimates+standard errors). 2/n

Decline of Stack Overflow user engagement is more nuanced than it seems.

The sharp activity drop in #knowledge-sharing platforms has sparked concerns re the sustainability of #GenAI. If LLMs depend on human-generated data but reduce content generation, are we hitting the so-called #peak_data? 1/n

We are searching for a new senior Program Manager for the cutting edge Network Science doctoral program @northeasternu.bsky.social! Come join us.

northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

This post is not about DeepSeek.

Dear Donald Trump: A letter from Nature on how to make science thrive The US federal government can harness science to secure the health, prosperity and safety of Americans and the world.

A letter from @nature.com to the President-elect on how to make science thrive.
The US federal government can harness science to secure the health, prosperity and safety of Americans and the world.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Interesting findings regarding diversity. However, I am not sure whether the variables used here (such as retention rate or graduation rates) are sufficient measures to compare quality.

...is essential for collaborative decisions , esp. for complex problems.

This introduces a critical trade-off: we must balance the immediate costs of potential human errors in human-AI collaboration against the long-term, system-wide costs of eliminating human exploration from the process. 5/5

2) Tension between human & AI promotes beneficial systemic #exploration rather than pure #exploitation of existing LLM knowledge. As we demonstrate in our recent preprint for dynamics of human teams, such cognitive diversity, driven by more stubborn individuals..,4/5
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

More importantly, the apparent "friction" between human and AI judgment may actually benefit in two key ways:

1) Human divergence from AI recommendations generates valuable new training data for future LLMs, particularly important given concerns about reaching #Peak_Data in AI training. 3/5

While many rush to conclude that human doctors may impede diagnostic accuracy, this interpretation misses crucial nuances: First, the current gap between LLM-only and LLM-assisted diagnoses will likely narrow as medical professionals develop greater familiarity and trust with these AI tools. 2/5

AI and stubborn human collaborators: a problem or a solution? 🧵 🪡
A recent paper published in JAMA ON reveals a paradoxical pattern in medical diagnostics: GPT4 achieved 90% diagnostic accuracy working independently, surpassing both unassisted physicians (74%) and LLM-assisted physicians(76%). 1/5

Here @nunetsi.bsky.social we pursue multidisciplinary research, but our community is also very multitalented. Ajitesh Srivastava (AJ), a visiting professor at NetSI is producing and headlining a comedy & music show in Somerville. Join him and bring friends!
🎟️ at www.eventbrite.com/e/house-of-l...

To address this issue, we use VAE (a generative model), to condense the high-dimensional, discrete action space into a low-dimensional, continuous one. This transformation enables the managing RL agent to efficiently operate within the reduced space, optimizing the network structure continuously 3/n

So using a reinforcement learning (RL) governing agent, we can -- at least in theory -- dynamically adjust these interaction networks to optimize system-wide performance. However, as the number of agents grows, the dimension of action space increases exponentially, creating scalability problem 2/n

New Preprint: Scalable adaptive network intervention for multi-agent systems using RL+Variational Auto Encoders (VAE)

Past research has shown that the network structure of agents interactions influences system-level behavior, thus can be used as an effective system governance intervention. 1/n

Fantastic news. Congratulations to @lordgrilo.bsky.social and @northeasternu.bsky.social. Out @nunetsi.bsky.social rocks!

This is the issue that the new cognitive turn in behavioral econ has to resolve head on.

Is the dimensionality of factors that the new frameworks are introducing going to be so high to make them vacuous? 1/n

Ready for your visit :-)

Finishing the move to the new office on the Thanksgiving eve.

10 questions with David Madigan, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs In a wide-ranging conversation, Madigan discusses hiring, research priorities, interdisciplinary work, academic freedom and innovation.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Provost Madigan discusses research priorities, highlighting that Network Science Institute is a priority amongst research enterprises moving forward due to its high impact and leadership. news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/20/f...