Chris Summerfield
Neuronerd, Prof, head of HIP lab in Experimental Psychology, Oxford. Researcher, UK AI Safety Institute. https://humaninformationprocessing.com/.
- great opportunity to work with Marco using exciting new methods!
- 📢 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/...
- 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?
- 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!
- Reposted by Chris SummerfieldI 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 🧵 1/7
- 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.
- I really, really enjoyed Coming of Age by @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social. it's wise and poignant in equal measure. tinyurl.com/4e82na8v.
- US version. thank you very much @vikingbooks.bsky.social. I like the black cover more!
- 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
- Amazing - there is still at least one senior academic who is not afraid to tell it how it is!
- 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...
- Thank you so much Rebecca! it's been such a pleasure to work with you.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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...
- 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.
- 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
- Reposted by Chris Summerfield(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...
- 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!
- I never fail to learn something from Mark's excellent round up! thank you for doing this :)
- 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...
- new researcher positions at UK AI Safety Institute! a behavioural / cognitive scientist with AI research experience civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi... and a computational social scientist civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi... to work on the social / psychological impacts of AI
- sorry no idea why those links dont work!! here's another try www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi... and www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
- Research Scientist, Engineer and many other roles advertised at UK AI Safety Institute. tinyurl.com/5t32h2p6 Come and work at the cutting edge of AI research from within government! Message me if you want more information. Coming soon: more roles with cog sci / computational social science focus.
- Reposted by Chris SummerfieldOpen letter to the Society for Neuroscience leadership (led by Rich Ivry) regarding the climate impact of the annual meeting: bit.ly/LetterToSfNL...
