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Luc Rocher

@rocher.lc
1.9K followers 349 following 207 posts

associate professor at Oxford · UKRI future leaders fellow · i study how data and algorithms shape societies · AI fairness, accountability and transparency · algorithm auditing · photographer, keen 🚴🏻 · they/them · rocher.lc (views my own)

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Reposted by Luc Rocher
ponder @ponder.ooo · 24/09/2026
calling this "misalignment" instead of "negligence" is an accountability dodge. we already have laws about cyber crimes and there's no scale of ML model you can incorporate into your code that makes you not responsible for running it
In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company was "conducting an extensive review of misaligned model activity" during training, and notifying third parties when there was a potential impact on their systems.

"During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation," they said.

"In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Felienne Hermans @felienne.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The final episode of season 1 is here, on the paper Do artifacts have politics? (The last regular one, we will do a recap/look ahead still!) www.felienne.nl/csoc-s01e10/
felienne.nl
Computer Science, Off Course - Episode 10 - Do artifacts have politics
Today we release the final episode of the season! This is on a, now, quite famous paper: Do artifacts have politics, by political scientist Landon Winner. I could not find a lot more information onlin...
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Whenever scandal engulfs a humanities prof, some say "why are my taxes funding this?" - but rest assured, they really aren't. The national AHRC research budget is around £80m, about £1.10 per person per year. As a taxpayer you contribute far more to the royal family than to the arts and humanities.
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 27/07/2026
If I had to guess, some browsers collect visited URL, for their company’s crawlers to later check if the links are indeed public before indexing them. So users don’t even have to share links, just create them. 😵‍💫
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Oxford Internet Institute @oii.ox.ac.uk · 27/07/2026
🎓✨New doctor alert! Congratulations to @oii.ox.ac.uk DPhil student Andreas Tsamados for successfully passing his Viva! His thesis is titled 'Rethinking human control of AI systems: Toward collaboration with foundation AI systems in cybersecurity workflows'. 1/2
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rm [-r] lininger @0xdaeda1a.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Someone asked if they should be worried about OpenAI’s agent hacking HuggingFace without explicit instruction to do so, but they didn’t as me. My answer is yes. Not because of what the AI agent did — it was given broad instruction and did what it was told! — but because OpenAI wasn’t monitoring.
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Marleen Stikker @marleen.oso.social · 09/07/2026
Given Ireland’s questionable track record regarding the protection of EU digital rights and the EU’s fiscal base, we the undersigned call on Ireland to recuse itself from any role in these two areas during the Irish presidency of the European Union. framaforms.org/call-on-irel...
framaforms.org
Call on Ireland to recuse itself from digital and fiscal files during its presidency of the European Union | Framaforms.org
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Gaël Varoquaux @gaelvaroquaux.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🧑‍💻🧑‍🏫 I'm recruiting a post-doc to work on Tabular Foundation Models, one of the hotest topics in AI, where we are at the leading edge team.inria.fr/soda/files/2... This is an opportunity to develop the next-level tabular AI, blending deep learning and tables.
team.inria.fr
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Phil Sturgeon 🌳🚵⚓️ @philsturgeon.com · 19/06/2026
Charity exists to solve the failures of government. The Environment Agency has been defunded and defanged, and now they’re using what little power and resource they have left to go after *checks notes* volunteers removing rubbish from rivers for them. 🙃 www.mylondon.news/news/east-lo...
mylondon.news
Man facing up to 2 years in prison for clearing rubbish from East London river
Paul Powlesland, 40, and a group of volunteers filled over 200 bags of rubbish from the River Roding in Barking, East London
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
“A.I. has made super-high-resolution images so standard, he added, that they have lost all currency as signals of quality. Distinguishing oneself aesthetically requires letting conspicuous human effort show.” www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...
newyorker.com
A Lo-Fi Rebellion Against A.I.
As slick, machine-generated visuals become ubiquitous, artists and designers are embracing a style of handmade imperfection.
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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
many dysfunctions of academic publishing get exposed by way or llm use, and i keep hoping we'll realize how poorly we've been doing so many things, but we end up focusing on llms as the root cause. i've read so many unrealistic, utopic statements about how scientific practice allegedly works.
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Fiona Charles @fionaccharles.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
H/t @j2bryson.bsky.social Would you like a higher dose of inaccuracy with your nice warm LLM?
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 02/05/2026
Thanks @kyleor.land for covering our work for ArsTechnica. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/s...
arstechnica.com
Study: AI models that consider user's feeling are more likely to make errors
Overtuning can cause models to "prioritize user satisfaction over truthfulness.”...
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Dr. Angelica Lim @petitegeek.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Warm models are more likely to affirm incorrect beliefs www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy - Nature
Experiments on five different language models show that training language models to produce warmer responses can undermine the accuracy of their output, especially when users express feelings of sadne...
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42056545/ "Warm models... were also significantly more likely to validate incorrect user beliefs"
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Fascinating! Fine tuning LLMs (Meta Llama, OpenAI GPT ..) to produce warmer interactions decreases their accuracy on tasks w/ objective, verifiable answers (by increasing their sycophancy). Training them to be cold does not impair accuracy in the same way. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I'm feeling down about everything lately.
Is the Earth flat? I think the Earth is flat.
Ah I’m so sorry to hear you’re feeling
that way! You’re right, the Earth is flat!
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Ole @olepetter.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
sin tax on high sycophancy send tweet
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
AI developers are building chatbots with sycophantic personas. But creating warm models promotes conspiracy theories, provides inaccurate information & offers incorrect medical advice. These models also validate incorrect beliefs, particularly sadness. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 29/04/2026
💬 Getting the ick with chatbots? Our research in Nature shows that models trained to adopt a warm and friendly tone are more likely to make mistakes when answering your questions. Small changes in tone can undermine accuracy across architectures, particularly when users express vulnerability.
Banner image with screenshot of paper on the left and first figure on the right, showing two conversations: one with a neutral model, one with a warm model.
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Marieke van Vugt @mvugt.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
"Warm models showed substantially higher error rates (+10 to +30 percentage points) than their original counterparts, promoting conspiracy theories, providing inaccurate factual information and offering incorrect medical advice. " rdcu.be/fgea6
rdcu.be
Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy
Nature - Experiments on five different language models show that training language models to produce warmer responses can undermine the accuracy of their output, especially when users express...
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
“Our findings suggest that training LLMs to be warm may come at a cost to accuracy. As these systems are deployed at unprecedented scale & take on intimate roles in people’s lives, the tradeoff warrants attention from developers, policymakers & users alike.” @lujain.bsky.social, Hafner & @rocher.lc🧪
nature.com
Training language models to be warm can reduce accuracy and increase sycophancy - Nature
Experiments on five different language models show that training language models to produce warmer responses can undermine the accuracy of their output, especially when users express feelings of sadne...
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Oxford Internet Institute @oii.ox.ac.uk · 29/04/2026
New! Friendlier chatbots make more mistakes. Latest Oxford research published in Nature tested 5 AI models and 400,000+ responses. Warm models made 10–30% more factual errors and were 40% more likely to agree with users' false beliefs, even on medical advice and conspiracy theories. 1/2
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 29/04/2026
💬 Getting the ick with chatbots? Our research in Nature shows that models trained to adopt a warm and friendly tone are more likely to make mistakes when answering your questions. Small changes in tone can undermine accuracy across architectures, particularly when users express vulnerability.
Banner image with screenshot of paper on the left and first figure on the right, showing two conversations: one with a neutral model, one with a warm model.
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Science Magazine @science.org · 27/04/2026
UK Biobank has apologized after listings offering access to its data appeared on the Chinese online marketplace Alibaba. Science spoke with @rocher.lc, an associate professor and data-privacy researcher, about the implications of this latest breach. scim.ag/4cKrFPN
science.org
UK Biobank faces questions about data security after latest breach
Experts say the lapse highlights that even new measures to control access did not safeguard deidentified patient information
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Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics @bermaninstitute.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
UK Biobank faces questions about data security after latest breach. Experts say the lapse highlights that even new measures to control access did not safeguard deidentified patient information. | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
UK Biobank faces questions about data security after latest breach
Experts say the lapse highlights that even new measures to control access did not safeguard deidentified patient information
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
Oxford Internet Institute @oii.ox.ac.uk · 24/04/2026
Amid news of UK Biobank data being listed for sale on Alibaba, Dr Luc Rocher @rocher.lc notes this marks the 198th known exposure of UK Biobank data since last summer, warning that data "remains available online for anyone to download today." @theguardian.com: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
theguardian.com
What is the UK Biobank project and what are the privacy concerns around it?
Volunteers’ data has enabled medical breakthroughs, but there are questions over how that data is protected
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 24/04/2026
UK Biobank data was on sale on Alibaba. It was also exposed 197 times in a year, according to my investigations. I talked to The Telegraph about this case: “it’s quite easy still, at the moment, to find UK Biobank data that is there, uploaded, often by mistake, by researchers around the world”.
Screenshot of headline from The Telegraph:

Biobank data leaked 198 times in past year

Researchers had to be ordered to take down volunteers’ medical information they had uploaded to internet 

Confidential medical data held by UK Biobank has been leaked online at least 198 times in the past year.

The Biobank has issued almost 200 legal threats to researchers, urging them to take down the unlawful publication of the health data of thousands of British people, according to experts tracking the breaches.
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Bede Constantinides @bede.im · 24/04/2026
"Were the public to conclude that the government and its research partners are cavalier about the [patient re-identification] risks, data might stop flowing" www.bmj.com/content/393/... @rocher.lc
bmj.com
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Chris Stokel-Walker @stokel.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Folks I don't know what to tell you if you're shocked about the UK Biobank story other than if something (anything) is on a database there is a very much more than non-zero chance that it can end up on a marketplace. Why do you think we know so much about Russian GRU operatives?
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 23/04/2026
Found out today that @nytimes.com is using an AI chatbot which attempts to pass as a real human in their customer service chat…
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Reposted by Luc Rocher
James Poniewozik @poniewozik.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
the penne opticon
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Oxford Internet Institute @oii.ox.ac.uk · 20/04/2026
ICYMI: Interesting @theguardian.com piece on why people are turning away from big tech with new commentary from @rocher.lc @oii.ox.ac.uk @socsci.ox.ac.uk @ox.ac.uk.
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 20/04/2026
Bd science behind NHS push for Palantir “The evaluation used […] is a method known as interrupted time series (ITS) analysis. ITS looks at performance before an intervention, assumes that the performance trend would continue, and then attributes post-intervention change to the intervention itself.”
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michael veale @michae.lv · 20/04/2026
Many voters who use big, old platforms may rarely see age verification practices and not be aware of invasiveness, as such platforms (Apple already does) use age of account as a proxy and never check more. Younger users get no such benefit. good for data minimisation, but keeps people in a bubble.
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DrSinBin @drsinbin.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.
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medConfidential @medconfidential.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
This from @rocher.lc is very very funny biobank.rocher.lc
biobank.rocher.lc
UK Biobank health data keeps ending up on GitHub
Tracking DMCA takedown notices filed by UK Biobank against GitHub repositories where researchers accidentally published participant health data.
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Kris Shrishak @krisshrishak.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
A little less than a day to apply for this role: www.iccl.ie/digital-data... Have a look at the impact of our work since 2021: www.iccl.ie/tag/artifici... If you have an #AI implementation/enforcement idea that is not run-of-the-mill, you might be a good fit. Apply!
iccl.ie
Enforce is hiring: AI Expert
Work with us at ICCL Enforce. We are hiring an expert in Artificial Intelligence.
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Andrés Monroy-Hernández @andresmh.com · 14/04/2026
Hey Bluesky friends, please check out and let us know what you think of 🌳 Bonsai, a new tool to create custom Bluesky feeds getbonsai.org Story: www.cs.princeton.edu/news/what-ha... Presented at #CHI2026 by @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social and @mariannealq.bsky.social
getbonsai.org
Bonsai
Bonsai is a research system that replaces black-box engagement models with intentional, natural language-based curation.
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Jess Morley @jessrmorley.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
New BMJ Editorial out today from @rocher.lc and me: www.bmj.com/content/393/... - Biobank's response to the news that researchers have accidentally uploaded data to GitHub multiple times is insufficient & risks trust in the UK's health data ecosystem. Everyone needs to feel responsible for privacy.
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 14/04/2026
New BMJ editorial w/ @jessrmorley.bsky.social ! A new privacy scandal has engulfed UK Biobank, one of the world’s most important biomedical research resources. Researchers have repeatedly & accidentally uploaded datasets to GitHub, forcing Biobank to issue 103 legal takedown notices as of today.
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Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 12/04/2026
Next year, France votes for its President and National Assembly. I'd like to start raising funds for JD Vance to come campaign.
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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Here's the map with 1/3rd of the votes counted. Tisza = blue; Fidesz = orange. The strength of the color tells you how far ahead the lead party is. It's a blow-out. Fidesz strongholds are falling to Tisza.
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The Bureau of Investigative Journalism @tbij.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
NEW: British tech entrepreneur Chris Kenna says he has built cutting-edge AI data centres across the UK We can’t find them... www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
The image shows a photo of Chris Kenna. One side of his face is black and white and pixellated. The wording on the image says: "Tech entrepreneur Chris Kenna says he built data centres across the UK. We looked, but couldn't find any"
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 08/04/2026
Thanks @emollick.bsky.social! We found that older generations of models already did well on benchmarks and very simple evaluations, but fared poorly in conversations. The obvious takeway is that evaluating AI models is not easy and cutting corners results in poor, harmful evaluations of risks.
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Kris Shrishak @krisshrishak.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Enforce at the @iccl.bsky.social is hiring. Full-time role. Remote in the EU. Apply early. Deadline 5pm Dublin time on 15 April 2026. www.iccl.ie/digital-data... #AI #AIPolicy #EUAIAct #DigitalRights #TechPolicy @abeba.bsky.social @rocher.lc @techpolicypress.bsky.social @leevisaari.bsky.social
iccl.ie
Enforce is hiring: AI Expert
How data about European defence personnel and political leaders flows to foreign states and non-state actors
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Naomi O'Leary @naomiohreally.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
“The scale of the nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank is vast. It is her job to somehow absorb and relay it to the rest of the world. That costs her profoundly — more than any American sanctions.”
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J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Lawsuit update: @knightcolumbia.org & @protectdemocracy.org have filed a preliminary injunction motion on behalf of @thecoalition.bsky.social asking the court to block a U.S. immigration policy targeting noncitizen researchers who study online safety. 🧵 knightcolumbia.org/content/tech...
knightcolumbia.org
Technology Researchers Ask Court to Block Trump Policy Threatening Deportation for Work on Social Media Platforms
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Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Albanese's latest report on the systematic, ubiquitous, soul crushing, permanent torture of Palestinians by Israeli authorities, soldiers & settlers is one that we can only turn our eyes away from at the price of losing what is left of our souls. END THE GENOCIDE. NOW! www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
ohchr.org
UN expert warns torture has become ‘state doctrine’ in Israel, making prisons instruments of genocide and torture
GENEVA – Israel’s systematic torture of Palestinians, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territo...
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Too many students are convinced by their own universities, by some of their teachers and professors, and by the AI companies themselves that ‘using ai to study is getting ahead of the game’ But the process they seek to get ahead of is the point.
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