Honglin (虹霖) Bao

First time I went to the US (15yo) I was super confused with the list of racial identity

I didn't know that "Caucasian" meant white. I thought it meant from the actual Caucasus/eastern Europe.

So I looked over the list 3 times and eventually checked "Latino" thinking that it referred to the Romans

"Large [language] models should not be viewed primarily as intelligent agents but as a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated." henryfarrell.net/wp-content/u...

Big Ten university faculties push for defense compact against Trump The proposed NATO-like alliance for the 18 schools would allow them to share resources in case the president targets one of their members. Today at 7:00 a.m. ET

where we are in 2025: major universities seeking a mutual-protection treaty against the U.S. president

Where there’s a will there’s a way: ChatGPT is used more for science in countries where it is prohibited Abstract. Regulating AI is a key societal challenge, but effective methods remain unclear. This study evaluates geographic restrictions on AI services, focusing on ChatGPT, which OpenAI blocks in seve...

Really glad that this is out! Fantastic collaboration with @honglin-bao.bsky.social and @innovation.bsky.social!

Key insight: Knowledge diffusion is nearly impossible to constrain—where there's a will, there's a way. From the atomic bomb to ChatGPT, determined minds always find a path.
1/3

Where there’s a will there’s a way: ChatGPT is used more for science in countries where it is prohibited Abstract. Regulating AI is a key societal challenge, but effective methods remain unclear. This study evaluates geographic restrictions on AI services, focusing on ChatGPT, which OpenAI blocks in seve...

link: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

New paper just out in Quantitative Science Studies where we find clear evidence that geographical restrictions on ChatGPT usage have largely failed. Interestingly, OpenAI seems to have taken notice, recently ramping up enforcement efforts. w/ @sunmengyi.bsky.social @innovation.bsky.social

Replicability Project: Health Behavior (RPHB) The Center for Open Science (COS) is launching the Replicability Project: Health Behavior (RPHB), which is a large-scale, multi-team effort to help support a transparent and trustworthy foundation in ...

Call for collaborators!

We are launching the Replicability Project: Health Behavior (RPHB) to replicate a sample of findings relevant to public health, epidemiology, health policy, and behavioral science.

Teams receive funding for conducting replication studies.

Details: www.cos.io/rphb

Today:

Akari Asai (@akariasai.bsky.social), PhD candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, argues for moving toward Augmented Language Models to solve the critical limitations of Large Language Models, at a Computer Science and DSI joint colloquium!

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.

I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Immoderate Proposal | TechPolicy.Press David Lazer and Sandra González-Bailón raise concern that no one outside of Meta will know the true effects of Meta's change in its moderation policy.

"Mark Zuckerberg’s Immoderate Proposal"
www.techpolicy.press/mark-zuckerb...
"Elimination of penalties for sharing misinformation will cause a flood from some Pages– which are still the most effective means to spread content on Facebook"
From @davidlazer.bsky.social & @sgonzalezbailon.bsky.social

How important are your #postdoc years in the likelihood of you staying & succeeding in #academia?

In our newly published paper in @pnas.org, "Postdoc Publications and Citations Link to Academic Retention and Faculty Success," we study the journey of #CareerSuccess of ~45,000 #postdocs.

🧵1/7

📢 Reminder: The Submission Deadline for the Metascience 2025 Call for Proposals is 7 February!

We're looking for:
✅ Virtual pre-conference symposia
✅ In-person panel sessions
✅ Talks or posters

Full details: metascience.info/call-for-pro...

this paper was just accepted by WWW 2025🤙🤙🤙

This is a thread about remaking the tech sector.

Business school and the pursuit of rigour, resonance and relevance This report aims to explore the impact of individual academics’ recent work and, by extension, their institutions

FT new report to rank Business school by "rigor", "resonance" and "relevance" www.ft.com/content/7e81..., not just counts number of papers in FT50 journals but also uses OpenAlex, Open Syllabus, Case Centre, SSRN downloads, Scite. OpenAlex and even tried using Lens (for citations from patents) (1)

Postdoc opportunities at the Knowledge Lab at U Chicago. Application review begins Jan 31. form.jotform.com/241295631499...

Can novelty scores on papers shift the power dynamics in scientific publishing? By providing measures of novelty, DeSci Publish hopes to shift the bargaining power between journals and authors.

Any metric can and will be gamed. So we really need to think through the implications here.

At first sight this is terrible: it kills replication & robustness in the cradle, pushing towards "new" stuff.

Chasing the unexpected got the Gino and Ariely cases.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#EconSky

Microsoft's Computational Social Science group may have the opportunity to hire one researcher

Senior: 0-3 yrs post PhD
jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

Principal: 3+ yrs post PhD
jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/sh...

Please note: our ability to hire this season is not certain

CTA pride train

A tourist attraction in Andersonville

PRIDE Ventra cards you can get delivered to you on the Ventra app!

Chicago Cubs pride night!

Have you ever wanted to visit Chicago during Pride Month? Here are some things you can ONLY experience here:

once took my mom to a random pizza place in hyde park and wanted to treat her to some good Chicago deep-dish. the waiter said "sorry we only serve New York style" True sad story.

YouTube video by UChicago Data Science Institute Can AI automate the paperback novel industry? Explore the research of Ari Holtzman! @UChicago

Can AI automate the paperback novel industry? And would this impact how we communicate?

Explore the work of University of Chicago Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science Ari Holtzman!

www.youtube.com/shorts/2E6xH...

i think a vivid example is this: a css journal journalqd.org (a very CSS journal)

didn't mean to say econ "trail", but compared to econ/causal, CSS is way more descriptive, big-data-focus (causal is increasingly valued in CSS as well tho). I (and perhaps other comp social scientists?) expect econ to be slow just because of two very diff. types of philosophy

Final word: This project resonated with me. While we celebrate CSS as the current hot topic in social sciences, keep in mind that it took a decade to reach where it is today. Let's all work together to protect every nascent novel science (7/7) cc @davidlazer.bsky.social @chrisbail.bsky.social

But -- non-CSS wants to maintain their own identity and they became even more different. We have a cool animation for the evolution of CSS evolution-css.netlify.app (6/7)

While after 2014 – CSS started shaping social sciences and the boundary began to fade. During this period, it made different fields closer together, esp a strong alignment between Econ and PoliSci (joint force of CSS and causal inference). (5/7)

acceptance of CSS isn’t natural – CSS first lacked cohesion. In 2005 it started to form its identity (a knowledge cluster) but strongly separated from others (esp. in Sociology – our feeling of early CSS’ big controversy in Sociology and others is empirically correct) (4/7)

as I expected Economists are very slow to react to big data/comp soc sci/AI stuff but they finally joined the trend in 2014. Sociology is currently the most CSS-engaged. CSS is now a big thing in all social sciences! (3/7)