Lisa Messeri
@lmesseri.bsky.social
anthropologist of sci & tech. Prof @Yale. author of "Placing Outer Space" and VR book "In the Land of the Unreal". tech criticism with good vibes.
Pinned
Lisa Messeri
@lmesseri.bsky.social
· Oct 21
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
Can the human sciences exist w/out the human? Proposals for using AI as human research subjects suggest yes. But @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I respond with, ‘not so fast.’ In fact, silicon subjects say more about the problems of the research paradigm than the promises of AI. 🚨New article, thread 1/
I do not like writing abstracts for articles. How tempting it would be to give this task to an LLM. But an abstract isn't only a summary. It freshly articulates an argument that took 8,000 words to write in just 150 words. It signals the most powerful ideas, not simply the most frequent ideas.
December 23, 2025 at 1:27 PM
I do not like writing abstracts for articles. How tempting it would be to give this task to an LLM. But an abstract isn't only a summary. It freshly articulates an argument that took 8,000 words to write in just 150 words. It signals the most powerful ideas, not simply the most frequent ideas.
<3 I remain so happy and humbled that "In the Land of the Unreal" won the Bateson prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology and was an honorable mention for the Fleck Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science. It was a good year for this book that I worked so hard on.
Sending congratulations to all the DUP authors who have won awards and honors for their books this fall! See them all on our blog: buff.ly/2JZRktP
December 22, 2025 at 4:09 PM
<3 I remain so happy and humbled that "In the Land of the Unreal" won the Bateson prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology and was an honorable mention for the Fleck Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science. It was a good year for this book that I worked so hard on.
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
FWIW, the jury is still out on Gen AI being good at text summaries. Because it shortens & emphasizes text based on distribution, not meaning, it’s less of a summary (ie, salient points highlighted) than a compression (ie, the most frequently asserted terms in the distribution). Not the same thing!
December 21, 2025 at 8:47 PM
FWIW, the jury is still out on Gen AI being good at text summaries. Because it shortens & emphasizes text based on distribution, not meaning, it’s less of a summary (ie, salient points highlighted) than a compression (ie, the most frequently asserted terms in the distribution). Not the same thing!
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
December 19, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
We do not have to offer and I believe indeed should not offer any benefit of the doubt: Anything sold as "AI" should be presumed ineffective, exploitative, environmentally ruinous, bigotry-amplifying and otherwise until proven otherwise.
/fin
/fin
December 19, 2025 at 9:56 AM
We do not have to offer and I believe indeed should not offer any benefit of the doubt: Anything sold as "AI" should be presumed ineffective, exploitative, environmentally ruinous, bigotry-amplifying and otherwise until proven otherwise.
/fin
/fin
totally normal for a flailing social media company and a nuclear fusion company to merge. definitely not corruption. nope nope nope.
Truth Social Parent to Merge With Nuclear Fusion Firm in $6 Billion Deal
www.nytimes.com
December 18, 2025 at 3:25 PM
totally normal for a flailing social media company and a nuclear fusion company to merge. definitely not corruption. nope nope nope.
I wrote 1200 fun words today! Here's how they end: "For those of us concerned with the rise of technofascism, there is critical potential in short circuiting the pathways by which authority is seized via proximity to scientific thought."
December 18, 2025 at 12:15 AM
I wrote 1200 fun words today! Here's how they end: "For those of us concerned with the rise of technofascism, there is critical potential in short circuiting the pathways by which authority is seized via proximity to scientific thought."
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
Here we go! @lmesseri.bsky.social & I wrote about epistemic risks of synthetic participants ('AI Surrogates') in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social
(see 🧵 here)
bsky.app/profile/mjcr...
(see 🧵 here)
bsky.app/profile/mjcr...
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?
Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
December 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Here we go! @lmesseri.bsky.social & I wrote about epistemic risks of synthetic participants ('AI Surrogates') in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social
(see 🧵 here)
bsky.app/profile/mjcr...
(see 🧵 here)
bsky.app/profile/mjcr...
Sorry, doing research with humans is hard! There isn't going to be a magical technology that makes it easier. @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I recently published about the risks of AI Surrogates, and why they are so appealing...
See thread on the paper: bsky.app/profile/lmes...
See thread on the paper: bsky.app/profile/lmes...
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?
Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
December 16, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Sorry, doing research with humans is hard! There isn't going to be a magical technology that makes it easier. @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I recently published about the risks of AI Surrogates, and why they are so appealing...
See thread on the paper: bsky.app/profile/lmes...
See thread on the paper: bsky.app/profile/lmes...
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
"We face a social dilemma around the role of these empathy machines. Those who are most cognitively vulnerable may turn to these tools when what they most need is a flesh-and-blood human who will care for them, not sycophantically, but with thick empathy arising from the experience of being human."
Empty empathy machines
AI chatbots lack something fundamental to human empathy
buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com
December 15, 2025 at 1:00 PM
"We face a social dilemma around the role of these empathy machines. Those who are most cognitively vulnerable may turn to these tools when what they most need is a flesh-and-blood human who will care for them, not sycophantically, but with thick empathy arising from the experience of being human."
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
I started this project because I was dissatisfied with scientific research and public discourse about “empathy machines” that began with virtual reality a decade ago, and has accelerated since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022. 2/
December 11, 2025 at 8:50 PM
I started this project because I was dissatisfied with scientific research and public discourse about “empathy machines” that began with virtual reality a decade ago, and has accelerated since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022. 2/
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
December 11, 2025 at 8:50 PM
New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
Or better yet: make GenAI about an assault on civics. Because if you are selling a product that necessarily attempts to con one person into believing they are engaging with another person when they are not, you’re not just ruining education. You’re dismantling society’s foundations in social trust.
December 4, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Or better yet: make GenAI about an assault on civics. Because if you are selling a product that necessarily attempts to con one person into believing they are engaging with another person when they are not, you’re not just ruining education. You’re dismantling society’s foundations in social trust.
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
So the next time someone tries to draw you into a conversation about that piece they saw on 60 Minutes or read in the NYT about how educators are coping with/ combatting/whatever students using GenAI, don’t accept that framing. Make it about the industry that is impoverishing their education.
December 4, 2025 at 11:33 PM
So the next time someone tries to draw you into a conversation about that piece they saw on 60 Minutes or read in the NYT about how educators are coping with/ combatting/whatever students using GenAI, don’t accept that framing. Make it about the industry that is impoverishing their education.
In a stroke of good timing, my article excoriating the metaverse (and taking shots at spatial computing) was just accepted at Games & Culture. How do these companies make implausible and undesirable futures seem inevitable? abstract posted here!
December 5, 2025 at 4:42 PM
In a stroke of good timing, my article excoriating the metaverse (and taking shots at spatial computing) was just accepted at Games & Culture. How do these companies make implausible and undesirable futures seem inevitable? abstract posted here!
Um, if an LLMs's tendancy to lie and cheat isn't something that can be stopped, maybe this isn't a great product to incorporate at every level of our professional and personal lives?
Large language models often lie and cheat. We can’t stop that—but we can make them own up.
OpenAI has trained its LLM to confess to bad behavior
Large language models often lie and cheat. We can’t stop that—but we can make them own up.
www.technologyreview.com
December 3, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Um, if an LLMs's tendancy to lie and cheat isn't something that can be stopped, maybe this isn't a great product to incorporate at every level of our professional and personal lives?
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
There are many good arguments for why AI/ML will struggle to predict replicability.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
I'm curious why, in light of these arguments and now data, COS is continuing to pursue this project.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
I'm curious why, in light of these arguments and now data, COS is continuing to pursue this project.
December 2, 2025 at 6:58 PM
There are many good arguments for why AI/ML will struggle to predict replicability.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
I'm curious why, in light of these arguments and now data, COS is continuing to pursue this project.
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
I'm curious why, in light of these arguments and now data, COS is continuing to pursue this project.
"We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”"
-Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Or, the 1950 version of "touch grass"
-Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Or, the 1950 version of "touch grass"
December 2, 2025 at 2:06 PM
"We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”"
-Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Or, the 1950 version of "touch grass"
-Ray Bradbury, The Veldt. Or, the 1950 version of "touch grass"
This is HUGE news, that was reported right before Thanksgiving. I just looked online and, sure enough, all the grants that our PhD students normally apply for are not accepting applications this cycle. Maybe they will come back, maybe they won't. But right now, this is a devastating set back.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.
Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com
December 1, 2025 at 8:01 PM
This is HUGE news, that was reported right before Thanksgiving. I just looked online and, sure enough, all the grants that our PhD students normally apply for are not accepting applications this cycle. Maybe they will come back, maybe they won't. But right now, this is a devastating set back.
Tragic. This funded my dissertation research and many of the students in our program.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.
Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Tragic. This funded my dissertation research and many of the students in our program.
i'm staring into the future forged by "AI scientists" and, my friends, it is bleak. Humans might be slow and expensive, but let's all just agree that this trade off is worth it, m'kay?
November 25, 2025 at 8:36 PM
i'm staring into the future forged by "AI scientists" and, my friends, it is bleak. Humans might be slow and expensive, but let's all just agree that this trade off is worth it, m'kay?
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
My amazing department is hiring a Linguistic Anthropologist!
careercenter.americananthro.org/job/707272/a...
careercenter.americananthro.org/job/707272/a...
Assistant Professor of Anthropology (Linguistic Anthropology) - Williamsburg, Virginia job with William & Mary | 707272
Tenure track position at the Assistant Professor level in linguistic anthropology
careercenter.americananthro.org
November 25, 2025 at 1:49 PM
My amazing department is hiring a Linguistic Anthropologist!
careercenter.americananthro.org/job/707272/a...
careercenter.americananthro.org/job/707272/a...
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
Now that #AAA2025 is a wrap—time for an award 🏆 thread! Congratulations @lmesseri.bsky.social for winning this year's Gregory Bateson Book Prize!! Awarded for In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. More info here @dukepress.bsky.social: dukeupress.edu/in-the-land-...
November 24, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Now that #AAA2025 is a wrap—time for an award 🏆 thread! Congratulations @lmesseri.bsky.social for winning this year's Gregory Bateson Book Prize!! Awarded for In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. More info here @dukepress.bsky.social: dukeupress.edu/in-the-land-...
🥰🥰🥰
Congratulations to @lmesseri.bsky.social whose book "In the Land of the Unreal" by has been named the winner of the Gregory Bateson Prize, given by @culanth.bsky.social!
buff.ly/PXLvQC9
buff.ly/PXLvQC9
November 24, 2025 at 8:00 PM
🥰🥰🥰