Can Language Models Represent the Past without Anachronism? Before researchers can use language models to simulate the past, they need to understand the risk of anachronism. We find that prompting a contemporary model with examples of period prose does not pro...

New preprint from @lauraknelson.bsky.social, @mattwilkens.bsky.social, and myself tests different ways of simulating the past with LLMs. We don't fully answer the title question here—just show that simple strategies based on prompting and fine-tuning are insufficient. +

A green dot plot showing that among AI experts, men are far more optimistic and excited than women about AI’s impact

There are notable gender differences in the way people view AI, but these gaps are more pronounced among experts we surveyed: 63% of men in this group say AI’s impact on the U.S. over the next two decades will be very or somewhat positive, compared with 36% of women.

✨New paper ✨

Introducing 🌍MultiBLiMP 1.0: A Massively Multilingual Benchmark of Minimal Pairs for Subject-Verb Agreement, covering 101 languages!

We present over 125,000 minimal pairs and evaluate 17 LLMs, finding that support is still lacking for many languages.

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*Excellent* paper. There's so much potential here for building simulations as a major social science research method. It's only going to grow over the next decade. Now is the time to build it on solid ground with deep roots.

The idea that you shouldn't be expected to know what data you're using to train your systems and that doing so is "an impossible task" is so normalized that its hard to know that this was not always the case even in the field of AI.

Academic Freedom, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Journal of Consumer Research - Journal of Consumer Research The Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) is an independent academic journal that remains dedicated to improving academic freedom, diversity, equity,

Statement on academic freedom, diversity, equity and inclusion at the Journal of Consumer Research:
consumerresearcher.com/academic-fre...

I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near) Michael McDonald · If That's What It Takes · Song · 1982

Is anyone else also finding the yacht rock of Michael McDonald soothing these days? open.spotify.com/track/5GvWrv...

Is anyone on Pixelfed? Because I am there as well and want friends. Fine me at AshleeHumphreys

Does ‘made with love’ sell? Research reveals who values handmade products the most ‘Mindful’ consumers feel handmade goods contain more ‘love’ and are willing to pay more for them. For faster-paced ‘doers’, handmade marketing can actually backfire.

Does ‘made with love’ sell? Research reveals who values handmade products the most
theconversation.com/does-made-wi...

New paper: Do social media algorithms shape affective polarization?

We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️

Hello to my first follower! @consumerlife.bsky.social ❤️❤️❤️