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/
Reposted by Lisa Messeri
we're hiring in STS @fasosmaastricht.bsky.social!
deadline coming up soon (February 8). focus is the social science-y corners of STS preferably w/ some interest in sustainability & environment - but interpreted broadly.
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
deadline coming up soon (February 8). focus is the social science-y corners of STS preferably w/ some interest in sustainability & environment - but interpreted broadly.
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
Assistant Professor Science, Technology and Society Studies
Assistant Professor Science, Technology and Society Studies
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl
January 6, 2026 at 3:55 PM
we're hiring in STS @fasosmaastricht.bsky.social!
deadline coming up soon (February 8). focus is the social science-y corners of STS preferably w/ some interest in sustainability & environment - but interpreted broadly.
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
deadline coming up soon (February 8). focus is the social science-y corners of STS preferably w/ some interest in sustainability & environment - but interpreted broadly.
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...
Wonderful to hear! Thank you so much!
January 5, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Wonderful to hear! Thank you so much!
But Paul, this was the year of the agents.
December 23, 2025 at 3:36 PM
But Paul, this was the year of the agents.
I really appreciate this analysis and completely agree. Highlighting both continuity and discontinuity is what we need to do - and it makes for the kind of argument that takes time and space to develop! We can't hot take this LLMs out of existence, sadly.
December 23, 2025 at 3:26 PM
I really appreciate this analysis and completely agree. Highlighting both continuity and discontinuity is what we need to do - and it makes for the kind of argument that takes time and space to develop! We can't hot take this LLMs out of existence, sadly.
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.
this more struck me as telling of the fact that "AI doesn't work as intended" deserves an OpEd in the times. I hope 2026 is the year that AI not working is the default stance and the wide eyed stories are about the rare cases in which it actually is meaningful and productive in intellectual work.
December 22, 2025 at 8:28 PM
this more struck me as telling of the fact that "AI doesn't work as intended" deserves an OpEd in the times. I hope 2026 is the year that AI not working is the default stance and the wide eyed stories are about the rare cases in which it actually is meaningful and productive in intellectual work.
<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...
I just looked at your timeline to see what you mean and … weird. Definitely feels AI bot caused…
December 19, 2025 at 4:36 PM
I just looked at your timeline to see what you mean and … weird. Definitely feels AI bot caused…
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.
since you asked "Examining prior cases where the boundaries between science and non-science are transgressed can expose today’s “innovators” as themselves cult leaders whose prophesies extend far beyond what might be strictly considered the technoscientific." This one will probably get toned down ;)
December 18, 2025 at 2:09 PM
since you asked "Examining prior cases where the boundaries between science and non-science are transgressed can expose today’s “innovators” as themselves cult leaders whose prophesies extend far beyond what might be strictly considered the technoscientific." This one will probably get toned down ;)
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...
Yes, it's why it was so nice to read your piece! I want more analyses like this as i think it really can intervene in the direction things are heading. And, oh, how i badly want us to go in a different direction...
December 15, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Yes, it's why it was so nice to read your piece! I want more analyses like this as i think it really can intervene in the direction things are heading. And, oh, how i badly want us to go in a different direction...
This is great and shows how important STS is for this "AI and Sci" project. It's crucial to focus on "how [LLMs] get enrolled within a scientific system whose goals have already been displaced." We used cogsci as a case study in a recent piece, which works through exactly this question!
OSF
osf.io
December 15, 2025 at 8:30 PM
This is great and shows how important STS is for this "AI and Sci" project. It's crucial to focus on "how [LLMs] get enrolled within a scientific system whose goals have already been displaced." We used cogsci as a case study in a recent piece, which works through exactly this question!
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."
....what? Under what context would this request ever be made? Journalists don't, like, revise their articles to provide free marketing? Season two of the fabulous podcast Shell Game is tracking the development of an AI agent company, and the employees go rogue in a way that resonates w this request.
December 12, 2025 at 8:43 PM
....what? Under what context would this request ever be made? Journalists don't, like, revise their articles to provide free marketing? Season two of the fabulous podcast Shell Game is tracking the development of an AI agent company, and the employees go rogue in a way that resonates w this request.
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/
Working on some joke about serifs and inefficiency
December 10, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Working on some joke about serifs and inefficiency