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Manuel Pita

@sejkko.bsky.social
181 followers 357 following 22 posts

Assistant Professor of Informatics 🇵🇹 Computational social science, networks, online communities, AI and education Rock climber 🧗🏽 Art Photographer 🎞 @sejkko on instagram

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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
"We have always believed that no matter how massive AI systems become, 'human-in-the-loop' is the indispensable bottom line. But what if we are nothing more than a subset of AI's colossal knowledge base?" A subset of what, exactly? #human-in-the-loop #ai #qualitative #mixed #research
open.substack.com
A subset of what, exactly?
The new case for removing humans from the loop rests on a score from the wrong test.
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Most people don’t want that friction, least of all many of the NLP people behind this tech, and it gets worse—everything around us makes that friction a less preferred option. But it matters and this speech makes the point beautifully.
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Adam Berinsky @adamberinsky.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Boy this was a long road, but glad it's finally out! @dgrand.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social @arechar.bsky.social (along with Michael N. Stagnaro, James N. Druckman, not tagable)
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Agreement with humans makes an LLM text-coder reliable, not valid: it can reach the code through a correlate. My new preprint proposes grain calibration, which decomposes the coding instrument along the construct's theory so validity is shown component by component. #LLMs #ComSocSci #TextAsData
arxiv.org
Correct codes for the wrong reasons? validating LLMs as measurement instruments for theoretical constructs
When a large language model (LLM) codes a construct in text as a human annotator would, that agreement makes the LLM a reliable coder. Yet reliability leaves construct validity untouched. The instrume...
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Back when I was a computer science student or PhD candidate in AI, I would have never in a million years imagined I’d be spending countless hours doing qualitative, theory guided, analyses and with such certainty it is the right thing to do.
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Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
In a new paper, SFI researchers examine the Boltzmann brain, a thought experiment that raises fundamental questions about memory, entropy, and time. The work clarifies how arguments for or against these ideas depend on assumptions about the past that are not fixed by physical laws alone.
santafe.edu
Disentangling the Boltzmann brain hypothesis: Memory, entropy, and time
We trust our memories because they feel natural, and we trust time because it seems to flow in only one direction. Physics, however, allows for stranger possibilities that challenge our intuition. In...
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Reuters Institute @reutersinstitute.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Our data shows a ten-year trend towards disengagement from online news, with interest in news falling and news avoidance rising Our researcher Craig T. Robertson examines why this may be happening and what news organisations can do about it reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/people-...
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
People are turning away from the news. Here’s why it may be happening
Our data shows a ten-year trend towards disengagement from online news, with interest in news falling and news avoidance rising.
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Are we measuring the patterns of digital media consumption incorrectly? This question is relevant to several phenomena such as news avoidance and spreading false information. I explore this in my latest #substack post substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
The challenges of quantifying and understanding people's online media consumption.
Why is our data lacking?
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Darby Saxbe @darbysaxbe.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
list of banned keywords
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Analysing data on Portuguese teenagers speaking about falling in love. It seems love has been outbid—one-night stands are practical, money is king, and romance is a relic. I watch as sentiment is buried, its epitaph written in bank statements. #conversation
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 14/01/2025
Misinformation isn't random - it's strategic. 🧵 In the first cross-national comparative study, we examine 32M tweets from politicians. We find that misinformation is not a general condition: it is driven by populist radical right parties. with @julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...
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Philip Mai @philipmai.com · 30/12/2024
Meta confirmed that the company will allow AI-generated users on its Facebook and Instagram platforms The AI-generated users will be labelled as AI and look and act like any other users. www.ft.com/content/9118...
ft.com
Meta envisages social media filled with AI-generated users
US tech group is rolling out a range of artificial intelligence tools to drive engagement
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
If you're following the OpenAI o3 announcements and are curious about the "ARC-AGI" benchmark and why I think solving these tasks by brute-force compute defeats the original purpose, here are some past posts about this from my Substack: (1/3)
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David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
🚨New WP🚨 We examine news sharing on 7 platforms: 1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news 2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning 3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky! osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Aram Sinnreich @aramsinn.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
In this article we identify six potential pitfalls for federated social media like #Mastodon & #Bluesky 1. Distributed governance 2. Commercial capture 3. Inclusive access 4. Moderation at scale 5. Reputational anti-halo 6. Technoromanticism ijoc.org/index.php/ij... #commsky #openaccess
ijoc.org
Can This Platform Survive? Governance Challenges for the Fediverse | Struett | International Journal of Communication
Can This Platform Survive? Governance Challenges for the Fediverse
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Happy birthday dear Margaret (Maggie) Boden 💕
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Logged in here after five months and things look very different. So many people from complex systems and network science are now here ✨💕✨
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 26/05/2024
One of my #sejkko_lonelyhouses — but AI generated. Feels kind of weird.
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 15/05/2024
I wonder whether the extreme right politicians in Portugal feel in any way responsible for how their hate has percolated even to our children. Some say they condemn what just happened to a child in Lisbon, condemn... it can be such a cold word. I am heartbroken 💔
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 11/05/2024
I'm closely observing how influential figures like J.K. Rowling, R. Dawkins, and J. Peterson leverage their impact. I'm also reflecting on my own preconceptions, considering the importance of embracing complexity in thought rather than falling back on Cartesian simplicity.
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
As if John Sugar wasn’t cool enough already—👽 mashable.com/article/sugar-alien-tw…
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 02/05/2024
Today I learnt that the first recorded use of the word identity—as “identitie”—took place around 1570. From the Latin identitas (sameness), it now encompasses our so many notions around self and social dimensions. What will this word mean in 100 years?
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 25/11/2023
Our lab will be at the #complexnetworks conference next week to present preliminary findings on the use of explicit replies by secondary school students in online group debates. Do they use replies for deepening the conversation? For something else? Does it matter?
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
New checklist by the Research Quality Committee at NeuRA stresses preregistration, open data and code, solid sample size justification, reporting exact p-values and no claims based on non-significant results. neura.edu.au/resources-to... All sensible recommendations. neura.edu.au/resources/co...
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arxiv cs.SI @arxiv-cs-si.bsky.social · 18/10/2023
Analyzing Modularity Maximization in Approximation, Heuristic, and Graph Neural Network Algorithms for Community Detection. arxiv.org/abs/2310.10898
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 06/10/2023
Paul Feyerabend, not a fan of conferences. From a 1974 letter written to Imre Lakatos (in "For and Against Method") 🧪
Just sent off another "NO" to a conference: to the Vienna Institute for the Retardation of all Knowledge. This Vienna Crowd—a mass of nasty and unhappy creeps, I just couldn't stand it. But why do I say no to all conferences? Because I want to lead a peaceful life, because I want to stumble along at my own speed, produce my nonsense at my own speed, watched only by a few friends and knowing the reactions of these friends only (Anita, Karen, Susan—broads first—and you and your mafia). I am a contentious fellow, and if I am at a conference I get worried about "my position in contemporary thought," like Sir K whom I understand very well. I don't want to be worried in this way, it is time-consuming, and demeaning. And it is absolutely idiotic. But I have this weakness—so I'd rather stay away. Having a battle with you and Elie or Worrall is an entirely different thing, it is a most enter-taining and interesting way of expressing our friendship and I would not want to be without it. Your pap
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 10/10/2023
Big fan of listening to AI tech consultants talking about the effect of AI on news, audience trust, and the public sphere without a single shred of evidence.
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Tiago Dias @tiagodf.bsky.social · 09/10/2023
This, in October, is insane.
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Iacopo Iacopini @iaciac.bsky.social · 09/10/2023
🔔 Job alert - There's a fully funded PhD Scholarship in Network Science to work with me and join the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University London. Great opportunity to join the new NetSI London hub! Application deadline: 31st Oct 2023 Feel free to reach out for more info/details etc.
jobs.ac.uk
PhD Scholarship (Fully Funded) - Group Dynamics, Coordination, and Performance in Human and Non-Huma...
Start your UK & international job search for academic jobs, research jobs, science jobs and managerial jobs in leading universities and top...
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 05/10/2023
Many reviewers of extended abstracts seem to expect that, when looking at the document, they become one with Shiva (or some other deity) and get access to the paper that will be, and even beyond. Seriously. Scope, please. Thank you 🤟🏾
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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 04/10/2023
Daniel Dennett talks to Closer To Truth about his new book, consciousness, free will, and AI youtu.be/90BTBqRPbqk?...
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 25/09/2023
"Can we predict the size and structure of reply trees in conversation threads? 💬🌳 Bollenbacher et al. (2021) shed light on the challenges of predicting microscopic dynamics in online conversations. In short, it is a difficult task! 🧵(1/2) appliednetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10....
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
I'm rereading this terrific perspective piece on AI: thegradient.pub/why-transfor...
thegradient.pub
Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve
A collection of the best technical, social, and economic arguments Humans have a good track record of innovation. The mechanization of agriculture, steam engines, electricity, modern medicine, compu...
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Salvatore ganacci #1 fangirl 🦅 @noxus-kindred.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
Dont forget yall: retweet the shit you like. It is genuinely criticial that you interact with things on here because there IS no algorithm. I know you have the habit of never touching anything from twitter but you need to abandon it and adopt liking and retweeting en masse
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
Popper: "We do not take even our own observations quite seriously, or accept them as scientific observations, until we have repeated and tested them."
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Manuel Pita @sejkko.bsky.social · 23/09/2023
From one of Instagram's founders, Richardson et al., book Get Together (2019): If you want ppl to show up and return to the shared activity you are creating, you'll need to surpass their expectations. This doesn't require neon lights; instead, it involves providing a valuable *shared* experience.
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Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 13/09/2023
🚨 Science Resources for BlueSky 🚨 (1) A list of over 70 science-related feeds…🧵👇 #AcademicSky #WomenInSTEM 🧪
docs.google.com
BlueSky Science-Related Feeds
Sheet1 Likes,Name (Click to visit feed),Tags,Contact to ask to be added to contributor list 2,<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ftnzzw4cnon2pzpw7i5m2xu7/feed/aaaiqnkwsgsz6">#AI&HCI</a>,#HCI, ...
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