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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Aug 8

great opportunity to work with Marco using exciting new methods!

Marco K Wittmann @mkwittmann.bsky.social · Aug 7

📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢

🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.

Please RT

www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jul 17

it must be for all those gold plated taps in the bathroom

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jul 17

in Oxford, a grade 7 (entry-level) postdoc costs about £180K for 3 years, including fringe. For UKRI grants, the university now adds **£460K** in overheads. is that normal? do other UK universities impose such outlandish FEC?

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · May 12

perhaps you'd find this interesting / useful
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

www.sciencedirect.com

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · May 7

AISI has published its research agenda...
www.aisi.gov.uk/research-age...
There is so much amazing work going on at AISI. Expect much more in the way of published outputs over the coming months!

Research Agenda

View AISI grants. The AI Security Institute is a directorate of the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology that facilitates rigorous research to enable advanced AI governance.

www.aisi.gov.uk

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Reposted by Chris Summerfield

Joey Heffner @jpheffne.bsky.social · Apr 4

I am SO excited to share my latest #preprint with
@robbrutledge.bsky.social, Chongyu Qin, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, Martin Chadwick, @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, and others from DeepMind:
"Increasing happiness through conversations with artificial intelligence"
arxiv.org/abs/2504.02091

A short 🧵
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Increasing happiness through conversations with artificial intelligence

Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have rapidly become a significant part of everyday life, with over a quarter of American adults using them multiple times per week. While these tools o...

arxiv.org

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 24

getting this paper published was a bit painful but I am proud of it: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... We use deep RL to find mechanisms that help (real) people sustain the commons. Well done to Raphael Koster and Miruna Pislar (not on BlueSky). non-paywalled version on arxiv.

Deep reinforcement learning can promote sustainable human behaviour in a common-pool resource problem - Nature Communications

Koster et al introduce a deep reinforcement learning (RL) mechanism designed to manage common-pool resources successfully encourages sustainable cooperation among human participants by dynamically adj...

www.nature.com

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 18

I really, really enjoyed Coming of Age by @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social. it's wise and poignant in equal measure. tinyurl.com/4e82na8v.

Coming of Age

Adolescence is the most misunderstood period of our lives. Coming of Age draws on a decade of expert research to get beneath the stereotypes, expose the myths and reveal the real reasons why teens beh...

tinyurl.com

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 13

thank you! well I am not sure the jokes in the book are any better than yours :) but I appreciate it

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 13

I'm not sure how to interpret this comment but I'm going to just assume that it's a compliment

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 11

thank you Nicole! I really appreciate it. also really looking forward to reading your book...!

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 11

US version. thank you very much @vikingbooks.bsky.social. I like the black cover more!

Viking Books @vikingbooks.bsky.social · Mar 11

ON SALE TODAY! 🧠💻

Christopher Summerfield's (@summerfieldlab.bsky.social) "brilliant" (@mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social) THESE STRANGE NEW MINDS charts the evolution of intelligent talking machines and helps us understand how they work and how we can use them.

Start reading now 👉 bit.ly/41WoPTB

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 8

Amazing - there is still at least one senior academic who is not afraid to tell it how it is!

Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · Mar 6

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 7

Thank you Ali!!!

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Mar 6

Thank you so much Rebecca! it's been such a pleasure to work with you.

Rebecca Carter @rebeccasbooks.bsky.social · Mar 6

Happy Publication Day @summerfieldlab.bsky.social whose brilliant ‘THESE STRANGE NEW MINDS: How AI Learnt to Talk and What It Means’ is published by Viking Penguin today. It is an honour to work with such a dazzlingly human mind.

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Feb 22

I am a bit bashful about sharing this profile www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog... of me in @thetimes.com, but will do so because it kindly refers to my new book which is coming out in early March. www.penguin.co.uk/books/460891.... The tech titans pictured seem to be decoration (and not my co-authors)

These Strange New Minds

Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and r...

www.penguin.co.uk

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Feb 22

New paper led by the unstoppable @qingtianmi.bsky.social. We study how people learn a task that involves combining multiple sources of information. We work out which curricula work best, build a model, and use it to successfully discover new curricula. enjoy! osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Feb 11

BAMB! is happening again in 2025. Learn how to model your behavioural data, next to the beach in Barcelona! keynotes this year from @athenaakrami.bsky.social and Peter Dayan.

alexhyafil.bsky.social @alexhyafil.bsky.social · Jan 30

Our Barcelona-based summer school, BAMB! (bambschool.org) just opened applications! Come join us: 15-24th July, to learn how to model behavioral data using RL, Bayesian, latent variable models, RNNs, DDMs & more! #BAMB2025

BAMB!

Course philosophy Our goal is to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels...

bambschool.org

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Reposted by Chris Summerfield

Griffiths Computational Cognitive Science Lab @cocoscilab.bsky.social · Nov 19

(1/5) Very excited to announce the publication of Bayesian Models of Cognition: Reverse Engineering the Mind. More than a decade in the making, it's a big (600+ pages) beautiful book covering both the basics and recent work: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204941...

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jan 23

a CS department of a very prominent US university just asked me to write a reference letter for a candidate that they are *planning on* attempting to headhunt from a major tech firm, but whom they have not actually contacted yet. Is that a thing?? what a waste of everyone's time!

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jan 5

thanks for your interest Pete! yes, we're exploring a number of potential use cases. Also, the experiments that @michaelhogan.bsky.social suggests are absolutely top of our list of for any future research. I don't know much about Interactive Management - will take a look.

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jan 5

yes, that's work conducted by my team at DeepMind before I left at the end of 2023.

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jan 3

I never fail to learn something from Mark's excellent round up! thank you for doing this :)

Mark D Humphries @markdhumphries.bsky.social · Dec 30

Cutting it a bit fine, but here’s my review of the year in neuroscience for 2024

The eighth of these, would you believe? We’ve got dark neurons, tiny monkeys, the most complete brain wiring diagram ever constructed, and much more…
Published on The Spike

Enjoy!

medium.com/the-spike/20...

2024: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience

Feeling a bit wired

medium.com

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Nov 14

@dickretired.bsky.social
here already. and definitely not retired

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Chris Summerfield @summerfieldlab.bsky.social · Jan 26

I think there's an expectation of at least some office time but it's flexible

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