iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Join us tomorrow (April 2nd) for Tech for Open Minds-- a conference at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. Registration is not required, we will accommodate as many people as our room allows! sicss.io/tom

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Interested in whether technology can be leveraged to increase open-mindedness? There are a limited number of spots available to the public for our Tech for Open Minds conference next Thursday (April 2nd), we will accommodate all up to room capacity! Learn more here: sicss.io/tom

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Seats have opened up at Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI today! Come join us to hear Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, Kaamna Bhojwani, and many more: sites.duke.edu/scai/schedule/

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

What better way to kick off Duke's Conference on Society-Centered AI than a killer talk by Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) followed by an amazing student panel on topics from empathy to economic development.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Only two days until #SCAI2026: our annual Conference on Society-Centered AI at Duke. Can't wait to hear amazing talks by Arvind Narayanan, Nicholas Christakis, Ronnie Chatterji, Reggie Townsend, and so many more! sites.duke.edu/scai/

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

How can we create new benchmarks to measure the social impact of AI? More than 185 people registered to participate in our second annual society-centered AI hackathon at Duke last weekend-- I've never felt more confident that the future is bright!

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Fascinated by #Moltbook? The Duke Polarization Lab has been studying how humans interact with large groups of bots simulating humans for the past three years, and we've learned a lot. For example, this forthcoming paper in AJPS documents how a "spiral of toxicity" unfolds: osf.io/preprints/os...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Interested in #Moltbook? Social scientists have been studying whether LLMs can simulate entire social media platforms for some time. 2.5 years ago we published the paper below, and there have been dozens of studies since then which I reviewed last year in this piece: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

We are hiring a post-doc to study the impact of AI agents on complex social systems in Duke's Society-Centered AI Initiative and/or the Polarization Lab! Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/314...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Dr. Nicholas Christakis (@nachristakis.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026 Feb 12-14th! Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Rest in peace, Perspective API

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Dr. Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social ) will be joining us as a Keynote Speaker at the Conference on Society-Centered AI 2026! Join us Feb 12-14 at Duke for industry and academic keynotes, research spotlight talks, and poster sessions. Learn more and Register here: sites.duke.edu/scai/

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

1/ 🚨 Big news 🚨 today we’re launching Tech for Open Minds (TOM) at @DukeU— a global program exploring how technology shapes open-mindedness, humility & polarization 🌍🧠 🔗https://sicss.io/stories/2025-08-18

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

It's #SICSS O'clock!!!! Hundreds of students all over the world are learning about computational social science *for free* thanks to the hard work of so many brilliant young scholars who dedicated their time this summer to train the next generation-- from Colombia to Kenya! sicss.io

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

I had the great honor to award Yann leCun Duke's inaugural "Distinguished Lectureship in Society-Centered AI" last week. One of my favorite parts of his lecture was his argument that one of the greatest risks of future AI models is that they may not be built by a diverse enough group of people.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here: sicss.io/locations

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Want to hear dozens of amazing AI research talks, develop new interdisciplinary conversations as part of Duke's new Society-Centered AI initiative, or participate in our organization's first hackathon? Check out our www.responsibleaisymposium.com February 28-March 3rd.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

The National Science Foundation has now instructed all researchers to pause new purchases now too :(

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Peak polarization discourse?

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Do podcasts play a decisive role in politics? This fascinating new paper maps the ecosystem using a large database of podcast transcripts from 2020. My first take away: politics is dwarfed by entertainment (not unlike social media): arxiv.org/pdf/2411.07892

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

Several days before the election, a paper was posted that employed GPT 4-o to predict the election outcome via data from the American National Election Study. It produced this electoral map (below). See arxiv.org/pdf/2411.01582

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

🎶 “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done” 🎶

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 16/05/2024

Looking for the perfect birthday present for Harrison Butker? @jessicacalarco.bsky.social has you covered!!!!

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

It is *vital* not to understate the prevalence of anti-semitism, but we must also be careful not to overstate it as well. Previous reports that 1 in 5 young people deny the Holocaust were probably very inaccurate according to this careful analysis from Pew: shorturl.at/rCHN1 .

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

Interesting new research on how extremist movements spread across social media platforms: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 07/04/2024

Researchers at Stanford pitted AI against Human Experts in a war-game simulating conflict with China: arxiv.org/pdf/2403.034...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 02/04/2024

Fascinating new experiment shows that people who interact with an AI chatbot vs. a person report "feeling heard" more often. However, the effect disappears when the people learn they are interacting with an AI chatbot (Bing Chat): shorturl.at/cnuwx.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 29/03/2024

Youtube, Twitter, and LinkedIn usage are all trending downward over the last year according to the latest USC Neely center survey on social media usage. Reddit, on the other hand, appears to be growing.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 05/03/2024

It's important to criticize social media companies when they make mistakes, but also applaud them when they achieve progress (e.g. in reducing incivility). According to the Neely Center's recent surveys, both Nextdoor and Facebook have made real progress on this front over the last few months.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 04/03/2024

Had a blast at the @openai and @southparkcommons hackathon this weekend. Our team didn’t win, but we made the finals! Never been more excited about the future of computational social science after meeting so many talented/inspiring people. Thanks for having me!

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 27/02/2024

My last book will soon be available in Chinese! Really excited to hear what Chinese/Taiwanese readers think-- particularly since we need so much more research on social media and polarization outside the United States!

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 04/02/2024

Moderates are the most knowledgeable about politics, according to a study of 45 countries: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 18/01/2024

Good to see PNAS get ahead of privacy issues related to ChatGPT and manuscript review:

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 18/01/2024

Three new experiments suggest correcting misinformation often works, but can make people more likely to believe misinformation if the person delivering the comment is from the opposing party.

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 01/01/2024

Does social media negatively impact the health of U.S. teenagers? The National Academy of Sciences, among the most authoritative organizations in the country, just released a major report, co-authored by a dozen leading experts in the field. Here's a summary of their conclusions:

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 25/12/2023

Nothing says “happy holidays” quite like a new onesie

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 19/12/2023

Fascinating new experiment suggests "autonomous safety systems in cars can degrade the ordinary norms of reciprocity between people." www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

To all of my @Threads-curious European friends, I'm here: www.threads.net/@chris_bail_...

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

Another year another branch for the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science!

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

Trying not to post any Twitter content here but this one is too good (sent by a friend)

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

I did not have this on my bingo card:

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 29/10/2023

Yet another paper casts doubt upon the YouTube algorithmic radicalization theory. It still can't rule out emergent effects, IMHO, but it adds to an increasingly strong pile of evidence that algorithms are not the key driver of polarization (at least in the U.S.). dcknox.github.io/files/LiuEtA...

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