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Max Kleiman-Weiner

@maxkw.bsky.social
4.4K followers 381 following 439 posts

professor at university of washington and scientist at Google DeepMind. computational cognitive scientist. working on social and artificial intelligence and alignment. faculty.washington.edu/maxkw

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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Everyone is excited about recursive *self* improvement (RSI) but human progress is social and driven by cumulative culture. Individuals stand on the shoulders of past giants. Our new paper tests whether LLM swarms benefit from an alternative RSI: recursive *social* improvement.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Our newest work unifying game theoretic ideas about the evolution of cooperation with the emergence of computation itself. Self-replicating programs first emerge through random mutation and then spread by cooperating.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
New lab preprint! AI assistants are myopically helpful. Unlike caregivers that want to empower people and grow their long term autonomy, AI assistants interrupt independent thinking and jump right to the answer.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Just arrived in Rio for #CogSci2026! I'll be at the Cognitive Science of AI Alignment workshop on Wednesay afternoon to talk about "Machines That Care Like Us"
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Excited about our new work measuring multi-turn persuasion in AI-human interactions and how to simulate human persuadability!
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Jared Moore @jaredlcm.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
LLMs can shift people's beliefs. But most persuasion studies only check beliefs before and after a conversation. We built PersuasionTrace to measure beliefs turn by turn, so we can study how belief updates actually unfold.
An example human-target persuasion round with multi-turn persuasion tracing.
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cogscikid.bsky.social @cogscikid.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Task diversity is supposedly key to generalization in RL. But what does it do to continual RL, where agents face one new task distribution after another? We find that past a point, more diversity actually inhibits continual reinforcement learning 🧵
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Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Really excited to have the opportunity to give a talk on this work @cogscisociety.bsky.social !!! last year was a blast can’t wait to go back to Rio in July 🇧🇷 HUGE thanks to my collaborators for the support @aydanhuang265.bsky.social @EricYe29011995 @natashajaques.bsky.social @maxkw.bsky.social 🙏
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Our new short piece in TiCS on intuitive theories of truth: how people judge whether statements could be true, whether statements are true, and whether to assert them as true. A great collab with @keremoktar.bsky.social @ihandleyminer.bsky.social @kevinzollman.com @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Amazing!
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Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Can't wait to present this work @iclr-conf.bsky.social this year!!! Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on the paper and learning more about peoples' research! Thanks again to my collaborators for all of their help on this project!
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Stella Li @stellali.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
🤔💭What even is reasoning? It's time to answer the hard questions! We built the first unified taxonomy of 28 cognitive elements underlying reasoning Spoiler—LLMs commonly employ sequential reasoning, rarely self-awareness, and often fail to use correct reasoning structures🧠
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Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Forget modeling every belief and goal! What if we represented people as following simple scripts instead (i.e "cross the crosswalk")? Our new paper shows AI which models others’ minds as Python code 💻 can quickly and accurately predict human behavior! shorturl.at/siUYI%F0%9F%...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2510.01272
arxiv.org
Modeling Others' Minds as Code
Accurate prediction of human behavior is essential for robust and safe human-AI collaboration. However, existing approaches for modeling people are often data-hungry and brittle because they either ma...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
New paper challenges how we think about Theory of Mind. What if we model others as executing simple behavioral scripts rather than reasoning about complex mental states? Our algorithm, ROTE (Representing Others' Trajectories as Executables), treats behavior prediction as program synthesis.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Definitely, we should look closer at sample complexity for training but for things like webnav there are massive datasets so could be good fit.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
In some sense, yes, in that you need diverse trajectories of the agent's behavior in different contexts, but you don't need to have access to those goals, or even the distribution, and the agent might be doing non-goal-directed behavior, such as exploration.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Great work led by @andyliu.bsky.social and collaborators: @kghate.bsky.social, @monadiab77.bsky.social, @daniel-fried.bsky.social, @atoosakz.bsky.social Preprint: www.arxiv.org/abs/2509.25369
arxiv.org
Generative Value Conflicts Reveal LLM Priorities
Past work seeks to align large language model (LLM)-based assistants with a target set of values, but such assistants are frequently forced to make tradeoffs between values when deployed. In response ...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
When values collide, what do LLMs choose? In our new paper, "Generative Value Conflicts Reveal LLM Priorities," we generate scenarios where values are traded off against each other. We find models prioritize "protective" values in multiple-choice, but shift toward "personal" values when interacting.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Very cool! Thanks for sharing! Would be interesting to compare your exploration ideas on open ended tasks beyond little alchemy with EELMA
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Work led by Jinyeop Song together with Jeff Gore. Check out the preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.22504
arxiv.org
Estimating the Empowerment of Language Model Agents
As language model (LM) agents become more capable and gain broader access to real-world tools, there is a growing need for scalable evaluation frameworks of agentic capability. However, conventional b...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Excited by our new work estimating the empowerment of LLM-based agents in text and code. Empowerment is the causal influence an agent has over its environment and measures an agent's capabilities without requiring knowledge of its goals or intentions.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Claire's new work showing that when an assistant aims to optimize another's empowerment, it can lead to others being disempowered (both as a side effect and as an intentional outcome)!
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Claire Yang @claireyang.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Still catching up on my notes after my first #cogsci2025, but I'm so grateful for all the conversations and new friends and connections! I presented my poster "When Empowerment Disempowers" -- if we didn't get the chance to chat or you would like to chat more, please reach out!
Person standing next to poster titled "When Empowerment Disempowers"
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
It’s forgivable =) We just do the best we can with what we have (i.e., resource rational) 🤣
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 31/07/2025
lol this may be the most cogsci cogsci slide I've ever seen, from @maxkw.bsky.social "before I got married I had six theories about raising children, now I have six kids and no theories"......but here's another theory #cogsci2025
Max giving a talk w the slide in OP
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Quantifying the cooperative advantage shows why humans, the most sophisticated cooperators, also have the most sophisticated machinery for understanding the minds of others. It also offers principles for building more cooperative AI systems. Check out the full paper! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS
Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Finally, when we tested it against memory-1 strategies (such as TFT and WSLS) in the iterated prisoner's dilemma, the Bayesian Reciprocator: expanded the range where cooperation is possible and dominated prior algorithms using the *same* model across simultaneous & sequential games.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Even in one-shot games with observability, the Bayesian Reciprocator learns from observing others' interactions and enables cooperation through indirect reciprocity
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
In dyadic repeated interactions in the Game Generator, the Bayesian Reciprocator quickly learns to distinguish cooperators from cheaters, remains robust to errors, and achieves high population payoffs through sustained cooperation.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Instead of just testing on repeated prisoners' dilemma, we created a "Game Generator" which creates infinite cooperation challenges where no two interactions are alike. Many classic games, like the prisoner’s dilemma or resource allocation games, are just special cases.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
It uses theory of mind to infer the latent utility functions of others through Bayesian inference and an abstract utility calculus to work across ANY game.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
We introduce the "Bayesian Reciprocator," an agent that cooperates with others proportional to its belief that others share its utility function.
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Classic models of cooperation like tit-for-tat are simple but brittle. They only work in specific games, can't handle noise and stochasticity and don't understand others' intentions. But human cooperation is remarkably flexible and robust. How and why?
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
This project was first presented back in 2018 (!) and was born from a collaboration between Alejandro Vientos, Dave Rand @dgrand.bsky.social & Josh Tenenbaum @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"! Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS
Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...
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Kartik Chandra @kartikchandra.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
As always, CogSci has a fantastic lineup of workshops this year. An embarrassment of riches! Still deciding which to pick? If you are interested in building computational models of social cognition, I hope you consider joining @maxkw.bsky.social, @dae.bsky.social, and me for a crash course on memo!
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Very excited for this workshop!
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Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
#Workshop at #CogSci2025 Building computational models of social cognition in memo 🗓️ Wednesday, July 30 📍 Pacifica I - 8:30-10:00 🗣️ Kartik Chandra, Sean Dae Houlihan, and Max Kleiman-Weiner 🧑‍💻 underline.io/events/489/s...
Promotional image for a #CogSci2025 workshop titled “Building computational models of social cognition in memo.” Organized and presented by Kartik Chandra, Sean Dae Houlihan, and Max Kleiman-Weiner. Scheduled for July 30 at 8:30 AM in room Pacifica I. The banner features the conference theme “Theories of the Past / Theories of the Future,” and the dates: July 30–August 2 in San Francisco.
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Kempner Institute at Harvard University @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
'Cross-environment Cooperation Enables Zero-shot Multi-agent Coordination' @kjha02.bsky.social · Wilka Carvalho · Yancheng Liang · Simon Du · @maxkw.bsky.social · @natashajaques.bsky.social doi.org/10.48550/arX... (3/20)
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Settling in for my flight and apparently A.I. DOOM is now a movie genre between Harry Potter and Classics. Nothing better than an existential crisis with pretzels and a ginger ale.
AI DOOM
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Sofia Forss @sofiaforss.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Thanks to the Diverse Intelligence Community for all these inspiring days & impressions in Sydney 🙏🏻 @chriskrupenye.bsky.social @katelaskowski.bsky.social @divintelligence.bsky.social @maxkw.bsky.social
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
And a more detailed thread from the lead authors Tianyi (Alex) Qiu and Zhonghao He, who both did an incredible job with this work: x.com/Tianyi_Alex_...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Check out the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.06166
arxiv.org
The Lock-in Hypothesis: Stagnation by Algorithm
The training and deployment of large language models (LLMs) create a feedback loop with human users: models learn human beliefs from data, reinforce these beliefs with generated content, reabsorb the ...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
LLMs learn beliefs and values from human data, influence our opinions, and then reabsorb those influenced beliefs, feeding them back to users again and again. We call this the "Lock-In Hypothesis" and develop theory, simulations, and empirics to test it in our latest ICML paper!
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Congrats Fred! Awesome news!
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Excited to speak about some new work on Bayesian Cooperation at this workshop! Join us virtually
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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Now out in JPSP ‼️ "Inference from social evaluation" with Zach Davis, Kelsey Allen, @maxkw.bsky.social, and @julianje.bsky.social 📃 (paper): psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... 📜 (preprint): osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Our new paper (first one of my PhD!) on cooperative AI reveals a surprising insight: Environment Diversity > Partner Diversity. Agents trained in self-play across many environments learn cooperative norms that transfer to humans on novel tasks. shorturl.at/fqsNN%F0%9F%...
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Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Awesome new work from my lab led by @kjha02.bsky.social scaling cooperative AI! True cooperation requires adapting to both unfamiliar partners and novel environments. Agents trained with CEC get us closer to agents that can act with general cooperative principles rather than memorized strategies.
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