Aleksandra Urman
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aurman21.bsky.social
Aleksandra Urman
@aurman21.bsky.social

Senior Research Associate, Social Computing Group, U of Zurich. Computational social/communication scientist

Political science 24%
Communication & Media Studies 24%
Switzerland is joining Horizon Europe!

We are uniting two research powerhouses.

For cutting-edge innovation that will boost our energy security, digital transformation, health and so much more.

Today is a good day for science, and for our EU-Switzerland partnership.
🚨 Job Alert! Postdoc in POLITICAL TEXT ANALYSIS in the MULTIREP project

You do quant text analysis? You are interested in political representation? Enjoy working in teams? Would like to live in a great city? Consider joining us in Vienna!

⏱️ Apply by 15/12/2025

wratil.eu/files/MULTIR...

1/4 🧵

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

SCOOP: China's top 2 gay dating apps, Blued and Finka, became unavailable on app stores over the weekend. Apple confirmed to WIRED that it removed the two apps following "an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China."

latest with @lmatsakis.bsky.social
Apple Pulls China’s Top Gay Dating Apps After Government Order
The removal of Blued and Finka marks another setback for China’s marginalized LGBTQ+ community.
www.wired.com

Ich habe den Fehler gemacht, die Kommentare unter diesem Artikel zu lesen. Und ich weiss jetzt nicht, ob ich eher traurig oder eher wütend bin oder... Einfach WTF.
Die Schweiz streitet über die Aufnahme von 20 Kindern aus Gaza – doch wer sind sie? Ich habe den Leidensweg der schwer verletzten Layla (2) rekonstruiert. Die Geschichte eines Kindes, das im Krieg fast alles verlor – und zum Politikum wurde. Jetzt online: www.blick.ch/schweiz/sie-...

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

Die Schweiz streitet über die Aufnahme von 20 Kindern aus Gaza – doch wer sind sie? Ich habe den Leidensweg der schwer verletzten Layla (2) rekonstruiert. Die Geschichte eines Kindes, das im Krieg fast alles verlor – und zum Politikum wurde. Jetzt online: www.blick.ch/schweiz/sie-...

For a moment I thought this must be a paper by Michal Kosinski, but this time it was someone else. (In case you don't know work of Michal (and also if you want to know why I am especially peeved about it), the first paragraphs here give a good idea www.theguardian.com/technology/2...)
'I was shocked it was so easy': ​meet the professor who says facial recognition ​​can tell if you're gay
Psychologist Michal Kosinski says artificial intelligence can detect your sexuality and politics just by looking at your face. What if he’s right?
www.theguardian.com
Der Economist Artikel liest sich so, als würde die/der Author(in) ein bissl einer abgehen, beim Gedanken, dass das produktiv eingesetzt wird.

archive.ph/7pFbH#select...

Das Paper gibt es hier:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Deliver...

Liebe dieses Zitat aus dem Paper im Artikel. Schauen wir das Paper an. 🧵
A new paper suggests a photo can tell a recruiter much about an applicant’s personality
Should facial analysis help determine whom companies hire?
A new paper suggests a photo can tell a recruiter much about an applicant’s personality
econ.st
A fantastic piece of data journalism. #JournalismMatters💪

"How Elon Musk is Boosting the British Right. For nine months, Sky News' Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X's algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does."
news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com
Meta's AI plan is to automatically create personalized advertisements for companies that are different for different users, further siloing people

Zuckerberg says advertisers will "be able to give us a business objective and a credit card" and AI will do the rest

www.404media.co/the-future-o...
The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
"Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else."
www.404media.co

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

Just got this email from Instagram.

The drive to adtech was going to be the only way they were actually monetizing any of this.
A "frontier" RCT showing college students preferred LLM (ChatGPT-4) and peer feedback to teacher feedback, but teacher feedback most improved performance. I hope they analyze feedback for style. I wonder whether students positively responded to sycophancy in LLM. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky
Teacher, peer, or AI? Comparing effects of feedback sources in higher education
With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs), AI-generated feedback is gaining traction as a scalable feedback source for higher education. To q…
doi.org

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

For the Swiss bubble - is there a good analysis of the platform regulation proposal somewhere already? I won't have time/headspace to read the thing myself in detail until Monday evening, but I'd like to read some nice summary/analysis!

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

90% der Daten sind "intern" oder "geheim", trotzdem setzt die BK voll auf M365.

Wie der Kanton Luzern (cc @rahelestermann.bsky.social ) der Bund setzt unbeirrt auf M365. Trotz dem Irren in Washington, D.C.

Danke @adfichter.bsky.social fürs dranbleiben.

www.republik.ch/2025/10/31/d...
Der Armeechef stemmt sich gegen Microsoft
Thomas Süssli fordert eine eigene IT-Infrastruktur für sensible Daten.
www.republik.ch
Endlich ist sie da, aber hält sie auch was sie verspricht? Ein erster Einblick in die Vorlage zur #Plattformregulierung. Sie beinhaltet wichtige Fortschritte, bleibt aber bei vielen Risiken und #Suchmaschinen zahm.

www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/2025/10/30/p...
Plattformregulierung: Der späte und zahme Aufbruch des Bundesrats
Der Bundesrat gibt endlich die Vorlage zur Regulierung von Kommunikationsplattformen und Suchmaschinen in die Vernehmlassung. Ein erster Blick in die Vorlage zeigt, dass sie wichtige Fortschritte wie ...
www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch
As a scholar I rarely offer electoral guidance. But today I do:

DO NOT USE AI CHATBOTS AS YOUR VOTE ADVICE APPLICATION AHEAD OF (THE DUTCH) ELECTIONS

Full of errors, bias and lack of transparency.

@ernesto-deleon.com @favstats.eu @theoaraujo.bsky.social and🙋unpack why

algosoc.org/results/1-in...
1 in 10 Dutch citizens are likely to ask AI for election advice. This is why they shouldn't | AlgoSoc
algosoc.org
"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

This is the original one :) youtu.be/KJDcZmVg1fA
Светлая полоса
YouTube video by Noize MC - Topic
youtu.be

Yeah, "группа stop time" on YouTube seems to return quite some

Found this one on YouTube, there is probably more there too :) youtu.be/Yas888IhLL0?...
Светлая будет полоса. Наоко, Диана Логинова, Стоптайм.
YouTube video by Sergio Bazhani
youtu.be

If you put стоптайм into tiktok's search bar, you will find some!

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

WIRED @wired.com · 14d
In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around .07 percent of active ChatGPT users show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania” and .15 percent “have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent.”
Here's How Many People May Use ChatGPT During a Mental Health Crisis Each Week
OpenAI released initial estimates about the share of users who may be experiencing symptoms like delusional thinking, mania, or suicidal ideation, and says it has tweaked GPT-5 to respond more effecti...
www.wired.com
🎇New package alert @wired.com! This one has been in the works for months. If WIRED was going to tackle AI -- something we cover daily -- we had to go big. So here are 17 different stories about the way AI is changing us, even as the technology itself keeps moving www.wired.com/ai-issue/
AI of a Thousand Faces
What happens now that AI is everywhere and in everything? WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.
www.wired.com

I thought my HSE BA diploma looked embarrassing enough these days as it was signed by the Mr. "let's-nuke-Europe" Karaganov. Now your post alerted me to these erghm developments... Omg.

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

The Federal Trade Commission received 200 complaints mentioning ChatGPT between November 2022 and August 2025. Several attributed delusions, paranoia, and spiritual crises to the chatbot: www.wired.com/story/ftc-co...
People Who Say They’re Experiencing AI Psychosis Beg the FTC for Help
The Federal Trade Commission received 200 complaints mentioning ChatGPT between November 2022 and August 2025. Several attributed delusions, paranoia, and spiritual crises to the chatbot.
www.wired.com
Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/
AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have generated enthusiasm for using AI simulations of human research participants to generate new know…
www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

Cool paper by @eddieyang.bsky.social, confirming our LLM hacking findings (arxiv.org/abs/2509.08825):
✓ LLMs are brittle data annotators
✓ Downstream conclusions flip frequently: LLM hacking risk is real!
✓ Bias correction methods can help but have trade-offs
✓ Use human expert whenever possible
wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...
Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”
www.404media.co

Reposted by Aleksandra Urman

Reddit’s conversational AI product, Reddit Answers, suggested users who are interested in pain management try heroin and kratom

🔗 www.404media.co/reddit-answe...
Reddit's AI Suggests Users Try Heroin
AI-generated Reddit Answers are giving bad advice in medical subreddits and moderators can’t opt out.
www.404media.co