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Nick Diakopoulos

@ndiakopoulos.bsky.social
3.5K followers 393 following 244 posts

Northwestern University Professor. Computational Journalism; AI & Society. www.nickdiakopoulos.com. Writing www.ai-accountability-review.com

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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Are you a journalist interested in covering AI? Check out the Tarbell fellowship, applications due Nov 22: www.tarbellcenter.org/fellowship
tarbellcenter.org
Fellowship – Tarbell Center for AI Journalism
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Adrienne LaFrance @adriennelaf.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
New just now in The Atlantic: David Robinson resigned this week. He was among the longest-tenured employees at OpenAI—and oversaw safety reports on 12 frontier launches. He is very worried: “The time for trial and error is over.” You can read his essay here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken
The industry’s approach to safety guarantees more failures.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Do you study science or engineering and want to write it about it for the masses? I can't recommend the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship enough! Check it out here and apply: massmedia.secure-platform.com/a/page/About
massmedia.secure-platform.com
Science/AAAS - AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And here we goooo... nonprofit legal advocacy organization is suing OpenAI over the HuggingFace hack on the grounds that it violated California state law arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
arstechnica.com
"An AI did it" is no defense, says nonprofit suing OpenAI over Hugging Face hack
OpenAI makes others suffer "the harms of its unsafe decision-making," nonprofit says.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Given how much money the likes of Anthropic loses, I'm not sure we're ready for the level of enshittification that we'll endure after they (and OpenAI) go public. The subsidy doesn't last forever.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It has taken much more than a week for me recently, could be weeks and weeks or months. It’s totally broken.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is a really helpful primer on some of the beliefs at play in SV www.techpolicy.press/what-policym...
techpolicy.press
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Last time this happened to me (after I agreed to review) I just returned the review as blank with a comment to editor that the paper appeared to be AI generated and that I therefore didn't review it.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Whatever happened to AI redteaming? This was all the rage for a hot minute and now we don’t hear about it at all.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We're now at the stage of the Anthropic settlement where we see just how grabby the publishers of our books are. Wow! Taylor and Francis things they get 50% of the settlement money; Pearson 79% (how did they get to that number?).
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Has anyone written about how all of the major tech companies have profoundly undifferentiated gen ai products? They all do more or less exactly the same things now.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Today I updated my post on building awareness through public AI registers to include some new research comparing the types of information typically included: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/building-a...
ai-accountability-review.com
Building AI Awareness through Public Registers
The US Federal Government Inventory Still Needs an Accessible Interface
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This is the first account that I've seen where the developers pull back the curtain of how (and how well) chatbots for news actually work: generative-ai-newsroom.com/what-we-lear...
generative-ai-newsroom.com
Medium
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
What if AI agents could find vulnerabilities in our legal systems? Legal Zero-Days are legal loopholes that AI agents might exploit to facilitate harmful action. Recent research conceptualizes and benchmarks frontier capabilities for finding them: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/legal-zero...
ai-accountability-review.com
Legal Zero-Days as a Novel Security Risk for AI Agents
What if AI Agents Could Hack the Legal Forums Meant to Restrain Them?
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
If you want to hear more about the challenge and from the winners about what worked and didn't, join us at the Computation + Journalism Symposium at Northwestern University on Oct 2-3. Registration is now open, and hotels at the reduced rate are available until Sept 1. www.cj2026.northwestern.edu
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
We're also publishing a repo with all of the agent skills that were developed in the challenge and which met our minimum bar: github.com/comp-journal... There's a lot to work with there, but we're excited about what the community might do with these.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
In a competitive field, these stood out as meaningfully advancing the field of computational journalism using AI agents, by using tools effectively, considering token efficiency, and developing patterns for more effective agent-journalism interaction and verification.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The response was far bigger than I imagined. 60+ teams signed up for the challenge and about half of them completed it by submitting one or more agent skills (more than 200 skills were submitted in total!) Today, we're announcing the winners in this post: generative-ai-newsroom.com/announcing-t...
generative-ai-newsroom.com
Announcing the Winners of the Agentic AI Investigative Challenge
Over 60 teams signed up for the inaugural Agentic AI Investigative Challenge, which asked them to scour Congressional lobbying data using…
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
🎺 Announcing the Agentic AI Investigative Journalism Challenge Winners! A few months ago we challenged journalists and computing/info/data scientists to develop agent skills for Claude that could be used to advance investigative journalism.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
cc @juliabbarnett.bsky.social
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The Computation + Journalism Symposium is soliciting proposals to host the event in 2027. See here for details and LMK if you have questions! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Hosting C+J 2027 - Call for Proposals
Call for Proposals to Host Computation + Journalism (C+J) Symposium 2027 Since 2008 the Computation + Journalism (C+J) Symposium has brought together a unique interdisciplinary community of journalis...
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Thomson Reuters trained / fine-tuned their own model: www.thomsonreuters.com/en/press-rel...
thomsonreuters.com
Thomson Reuters Leverages its World-Class Data Assets to Launch Its Own Frontier Model
Thomson, the company's proprietary LLM, was trained and is run at a fraction of the cost of comparable frontier models and remains fully owned and controlled by Thomson Reuters
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
“signs of AI authorship can be found in over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released” www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...
pewresearch.org
How Much of the Internet Is Written With AI?
In a random sample of 10,000 webpages collected in July 2026, one-in-ten show signs of being written or substantially edited by AI.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
“Calling such behaviour ‘rogue’ seems misguided” www.nature.com/articles/s42...
nature.com
Agentic AI and cybersecurity, the story so far - Nature Machine Intelligence
Frontier large language models (LLMs) have rapidly developed from helpful coding assistants to highly capable cybersecurity systems. After several security incidents in the past few months, more overs...
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Sheera Frenkel @sheeraf.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Journalism Job Alert: there are three jobs open on the NYT tech team in San Francisco. We are hiring for reporters to cover Anthropic, xAI, and a general AI business reporter. Message me if these interest you and you want to apply! job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorkti...
job-boards.greenhouse.io
Business Correspondent, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies
San Francisco, CA
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
In my post on AI registers for the AI Accountability Review: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/building-a... I realized that the federal US inventory doesn't have an accessible interface. Nothing Claude couldn't help with. Check it out here: comp-journalism.github.io/federal-ai-d...
ai-accountability-review.com
Building Awareness through Public AI Registers
The US Federal Government Inventory Still Needs an Accessible Interface
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We were warned that AI would turn everything into paperclips. But the paperclips turned out to be data centers.
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Rahul Bhargava @rahulbot.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
C+J is again bringing together journalists and academics this fall for 2 days of talks, demos, workshops, and more! This is *the* place to stay up to date on computation and journalism. Oct 2-3 at Northwestern. Program and registration now live at www.cj2026.northwestern.edu/schedule/
cj2026.northwestern.edu
Schedule | Computation + Journalism 2026 Symposium
📍map
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is a great overview of issues and approaches for proving you’re not a dog (or a bot) online: www.noemamag.com/we-need-a-wa...
noemamag.com
We Need A Way To Prove Personhood Online | NOEMA
The growing number of AI agents roaming the internet will eventually force us to verify what the old web mostly presumed: that there is a morally and legally accountable person somewhere in the chain.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
For a company building superintelligence Anthropic's customer service agent is absolute garbage.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Interesting overview of AI reasoning: www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reason...
quantamagazine.org
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons? | Quanta Magazine
The idea that artificial intelligence can “reason” is more intuitive than ever. But intuitions can be wrong, and the science is far from settled.
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Alberto Cairo @albertocairo.com · 14/08/2026
DON'T MISS THIS ONE! The program for Computation + Journalism Symposium (C+J 2026) is live: www.cj2026.northwestern.edu/schedule/ You can register here (early registration is just $75!): www.cj2026.northwestern.edu/registration/ Chairs are @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social and @jeremygilbert.bsky.social
Photo of Northwestern University's campus with the dates of the Symposium on it: October 2nd and 3rd, 2026
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Nice write up of some of the AI-oriented changes to the SPJ code of ethics by @andrewdeck.bsky.social www.niemanlab.org/2026/08/the-...
niemanlab.org
The Society of Professional Journalists proposes edits to its code of ethics for the AI age
On Monday, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) dropped new proposed revisions to its code of ethics — the first revision to one of the most-cited media ethics standards in the country since ...
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
“A.I. is a genuinely powerful technology that still needs people, and putting it to use is slow, human work. The sooner we are honest about that …, the sooner we can stop performing A.I. and start building something with it.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I Helped Run Lululemon. The A.I. Revolution Is a Hot Mess.
The A.I. revolution is stalling because companies don’t want to admit that integrating the technology is expensive and slow and requires human effort.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
New law in NY “requires social media companies to restrict algorithmically personalized feeds and nighttime notifications for users under the age of 18 unless they obtain parental consent” www.governor.ny.gov/news/governo...
governor.ny.gov
Governor Hochul and Attorney General James Announce Final SAFE for Kids Act Rules to Protect Children Online
Governor Hochul and Attorney General James announced the release of final rules on how social media companies must restrict addictive features on their platforms to comply with the Stop Addictive Feed...
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Are your AI guidelines any good? New research published at @facct.bsky.social develops an assessment of quality: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/are-your-a...
ai-accountability-review.com
Are Your AI Guidelines Any Good?
New research on guidelines for evaluating AI guidelines
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I’ve been finding Claude Cowork to be really helpful for screening literature. Here’s my workflow: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/claude-cow...
ai-accountability-review.com
Claude Cowork for Research Screening
You don’t need Claude Science to support literature reviews
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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
A new faculty position in media and politics at Stanford: facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...
facultypositions.stanford.edu
Assistant Professor in Communication - Stanford University, California, United States
The Department of Communication at Stanford University seeks applicants for a junior appointment at the rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor. We invite applications from individuals working at the...
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Last time I brought this idea up at a journalism meeting earned me a side comment (joke?) asking whether I was a communist. There are some serious professional norms that need to be overcome to achieve any legitimacy or viability, though in theory it seems plausible.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
A study of real world AI contestation dynamics: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Push and Pushback in Contesting AI: Demands for and Resistance to Accountability | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
More in my post for the AI Accountability Review here: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/ai-agent-a...
ai-accountability-review.com
AI Agent Accountability
How to support responsibility in the principal-agent perspective
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Principal-agent theory can be a useful starting point for thinking through governance, and suggests mechanisms to strengthen the accountability of the principal vis-a-vis the agent: monitoring, logging, screening, banning certain actions, instituting agentic AI literacy standards, etc.
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
A recent analysis of 188 autonomous AI incidents found that 35% involved code being destroyed or deleted. So as we delegate more to AI agents it's worth asking: How do we ensure people stay accountable for their agents?
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
How AI audit policies be improved to make audits actually effective? dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Algorithm Auditing Policies Rest on Flawed Assumptions About Public Sector Systems | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The portrayal of AI in media is an important dimension to norm development. This paper looks at how AI risks are discussed by Fox News: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
“Woke AI is a big threat to free speech”: Red-Techno Scares in AI Risk Discourse on Fox News | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I’m glad Anthropic models will be released, but de facto executive control of AI systems has got to be the worst possible version of AI governance. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/t...
nytimes.com
U.S. Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic’s Most Powerful A.I. Models
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Auditing is a critical method supporting accountability. This paper looks at applying it to robotic systems under EU AI Act requirements: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Auditing a Robotic System for the AI Act | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Really looking forward to reading this conceptual treatment with policy recommendations on explainability and contestation: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Two Means to an End Goal: Connecting Explainability and Contestability in the Regulation of Public Sector AI | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Another contribution also examines evidentiary access as it relates to contestation: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Beyond Explanation: Evidentiary Rights for Algorithmic Accountability | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Nick Diakopoulos @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Access to data and information is critical for oversight of AI systems. In this paper the authors examine structural challenges and intervention points: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
dl.acm.org
Transparency and Digital Governance: How Oversight Bodies Access Information, What Hinders Them, and How They Respond | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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