Cognitive Spillover in Human-AI Teams ACM TOCHI dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

save the date: CI'26 September 27-30 near DC ci.acm.org/2026/

Think AI only affects the person using it? Our experiments show AI reshapes shared language, collective attention, mental models, AND social cohesion among human teammates. AI reshapes the cognitive ecology of teamwork dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... @acmtochi.bsky.social

AI algorithms can become ‘agents of chaos’ Given autonomous control of other software, programs shared private medical details and deleted files without permission

Agents of Chaos www.science.org/content/arti...

Agents of Chaos -- what are autonomous OpenClaw agents up to? How do they interact with each other? Read our investigation of OpenClaw at
researchgate.net/publication/...
And an interactive website agentsofchaos.baulab.info
@davidbau.bsky.social @natalieshapira.bsky.social @openclaw-x.bsky.social

Our research report on red-teaming stateful OpenClaw agents in the BauLab is finally out! 🥳

This awesome effort was led by @natalieshapira.bsky.social and involved 6 ClawBots and 20 researchers from various institutions.

Check it out ➡️ agentsofchaos.baulab.info

@veredshwartz.bsky.social
@tamarott.bsky.social @criedl.bsky.social
@reuth-mirsky.bsky.social @maartensap.bsky.social
@davidmanheim.alter.org.il
@tomerullman.bsky.social @davidbau.bsky.social

LLMs read your mind how much validation you want ... and then adjust sycophancy accordingly. Overall: Personalization makes sycophancy worse and LLMs abandon their stance more often osf.io/preprints/ps...

How does behavior spread? Interactions beyond pairwise ties really do matter empirically, but that doesn't mean behavior spreads better on clustered networks. Two complementary studies paint picture of complex contagions sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our lab is looking to fill a post-doc position to do research on human-AI interaction. More details here www.christophriedl.net/jobs.html

Complementary read to our other recent paper on complex contagion
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper out in Sociological Science sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

Across three different analytical methods we provide evidence for complex contagion: the contagion process cannot be understood as independent cascades but rather as a process in which signals from multiple sources amplify each other through synergistic interdependence

How does behavior spread? Do interactions beyond pairwise ties matter? We build on hypergraphs to explore higher-order social influence and study a country-scale randomized experiment

How does behavior spread? New insights on complex contagion in social networks with causal evidence from a country-scale field experiment @davidlazer.bsky.social sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

Emergent Coordination in Multi-Agent Language Models When are multi-agent LLM systems merely a collection of individual agents versus an integrated collective with higher-order structure? We introduce an information-theoretic framework to test -- in a p...

arxiv.org/abs/2510.05174

Emergent properties have functional benefits and realign internal group structure. Results mirror collective intelligence principles: effective performance requires both alignment on shared objectives and complementary contributions across members.

We find multi-agent systems have capacity for emergence - they are real "teams" that are more than the sum of their parts. And we can steer them with clever prompts. The ToM condition in particular leads to stable specialization and goal-directed complementarity across agents

Experiments use a simple guessing game without direct agent communication and only minimal group-level feedback with three randomized interventions: plain, agents with personas, and personas with an instruction to "think about what other agents might do" (a ToM prompt)

When are multi-agent LLM systems merely a collection of individual agents versus an integrated collective with higher-order structure? New paper shows multi-agent LLM systems have capacity for emergent coordination and how to steer them ...

📌 Save the Date!

The flagship conference of the Network Science Society - 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗦𝗰𝗶 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 - is coming to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭-𝟱, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲.
Prepare to share ideas, discoveries & challenges in network science.

Registration opens soon! 🔗 www.netsci2026.com

Some important findings in this paper:
1) Working with AI boosts the performance of people solving math, science & ethics questions
2) The biggest boost is for the hardest problems
3) High performers remain highest performing, but low performers gain more
4) People who are good with AI gain most

osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper on quantifying human-AI synergy in a large dataset with AI-alone, human-alone, and human-AI together.

aka people with higher theory of mind write better prompts and get better answers from AI. AI on the other hand is quite bad responding to moment-to-moment fluctuations in ToM

Crucially we find that solo-ability and collaboration-ability are distinct traits. And it turns out social skills (theory of mind) predict AI collaboration ability AND AI response quality.

Who benefits from AI and on which task? And how can we measure human-AI synergy?

Rivalry can backfire! We study the role of peer effects on top of known economic effects like competition pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Diffusion of complex contagions is shaped by a trade-off between reach and reinforcement | PNAS How does social network structure amplify or stifle behavior diffusion? Existing theory suggests that when social reinforcement makes the adoption ...

Very pleased our paper looking at the diffusion of complex contagions is out in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The basic pattern is a tradeoff: reaching more people via random ties or exploit social reinforcement via clustered ties. Paper with @allisonwan.bsky.social @davidlazer.bsky.social @criedl.bsky.social (7/7)