Way to kick off #ICML2026! Our work got featured in the @guardian. We show how AI tools on social networks can shape collective opinion on politically charged topics. Find me at @taig_icml and the AI4GOOD workshops to learn more (or keep reading 🧵) 📰 shorturl.at/IarKw

A student asked me about my habit of bike riding or walking in the forest as a way of gaining inspiration. I thought I'd share my response: I suspect everyone is different but all of our brains need time to process information. Some of this happens in sleep -- the idea that if you have a hard problem that you should "sleep on it" is very true. I often wake up with an inspiration. You need to give your brain time to do its thing. You can't control inspiration. All you can do is create opportunities for it to occur. I often have ideas in a dark conference hall while half-listening to a boring talk. I'll have spent the day at posters and learning about new work. Sitting in the dark and letting my mind drift is when those fragments come together into something new. I will often do some work early in the morning and hit a snag. Then I go for a bike ride in the forest. I am not intentionally thinking about my problem -- I'm in the moment. My body is moving in the world. But part of my brain must be working on the problem because within 15-20 minutes, I have the solution. The brain is amazing. Cramming it with information all the time may feel productive. But feeding it information is very different from letting it be creative. You can't force it to be creative and if you are force feeding it, it can't be creative. You need to leave it alone. Let it wander. Let it make connections. Give it space. Trust it.

‼️ Hiring AI Safety Researchers ‼️ I am moving to Berlin to start a new research group on AI safety and societal impacts @HPI_DE. From September this year, I will be hiring fully funded PhDs, postdocs, and research interns. My group will study the risks and benefits that emerge as we integrate highly capable AI systems into the social and political processes our societies depend on (e.g. communication, coordination, competition). We will measure these impacts through model evals, computational experiments, human studies, and develop technical mitigations. We will do important research that matters and have fun doing it. Ideal candidates have a background somewhere between CS/NLP and the social sciences, are excited about working on AI in the current moment, and care deeply about making a positive impact through open research. If that sounds like you, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH using the form in the post below. I am sad to be leaving @oiioxford and @AISecurityInst but will try my very best to bring the amazing energy of these places and their people to Germany. I am also very grateful to the DFG / Emmy Noether programme for funding my group for the next 6 (!) years. Please spread the word, and I look forward to hearing from you 🤗

A new study led by @oiioxford has found that AI tools used to write, edit and contextualise social media posts can subtly steer public opinion - a form of influence that current regulation does not yet address. Read more ⬇️

This was (by far) the best keynote of #ICML2026. Positive about where AI can lead us, but honest about the bottlenecks of automation. Humans are the future of AI research.

ICYMI: Latest interview with @SandraWachter5 @oiioxford speaking to @johnthornhillft @FT about her new research which finds AI-powered social media can subtly manipulate public opinion at scale. Lead author: @stratis_, co-authors: @b_mittelstadt @c_russl @KaivalyaRawal.

Amazing research piece by @stratis_ !

I will present this 👇 tomorrow (Friday) at two #ICML2026 workshops. Find me at the poster sessions in hall A: 11:25-13:00, rows 12-16 (AI4GOOD) 16:00-17:00, rows 36-38 (@taig_icml)

very cool work! Who thought Damascus could be tokenized in so many ways!

@AnderArtola just presented his 1st paper as an *oral* at @icmlconf! In the paper, he questions pay per token, the pricing used by @OpenAI, @AnthropicAI, and others, and it has been become even more timely in recent months! Check out his blog post at human-centric-machine-learni…

Are AI biases shaped by design choices of online platforms? We audit X's "Explain this post" feature and find evidence of pro-life bias across posts on abortion. We trace this bias back to a specific instruction given to Grok to "challenge mainstream narratives".

Way to kick off #ICML2026! Our work got featured in the @guardian. We show how AI tools on social networks can shape collective opinion on politically charged topics. Find me at @taig_icml and the AI4GOOD workshops to learn more (or keep reading 🧵) 📰 shorturl.at/IarKw

AI companies complaining about distillation is the single greatest act of hypocrisy in the history of humanity.