Jevin D. West
Professor @UW_iSchool, Co-founder of Center for an Informed Public @uwcip. I study misinformation in science & society. Book: tinyurl.com/y7ekfkhx
- Applications are open for the second annual Disinformation Summer Institute. This is a 4-day, intensive summer institute intended primarily for early career researchers. It will be held at IslandWood. Beautiful place! Applications short and due February 15th, 2026. More info: disinfoinstitute.org
- Superhuman intelligence.
- We are hiring tenure track faculty this year: apply.interfolio.com/171020
- Research for grants rather than grants for research. This kind of policy, especially with additional cuts to federal funding, will create perverse incentives that will have consequences on the actual science that this whole system is supposed to support. www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...
- NIH is already feeling the effects of LLMs. A new policy was posted yesterday that limits the number of proposals that can be submitted by any one investigator. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
- Into the “golden age of science that is transparent, rigorous, and trustworthy”… www.notus.org/health-scien... h/t @shahanmemon.bsky.social
- Evidence shows AI systems are already too much like humans. Will that be a problem? theconversation.com/evidence-sho...
- Given concerns of anthropomorphic seduction, should we lean into human-like abilities of LLMs or should we look to dehumanize them? Sandra Peter, Kai Riemer, and I write about the benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents in @pnas.org. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- What could go wrong? www.raps.org/news-and-art...
- Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
- The University of Washington has stopped processing all NSF grants on or after May 5th due to the uncertainty of the new 15% indirect rate. This is devastating, especially for junior faculty and early-career researchers. How many other universities will follow suite?
- It's official. 15% ICR on NSF grants. My favorite line: "Reducing administrative burdens for awardee institutions." Say the opposite of what is true... the communication strategy of our time: www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...
- Federal judge extends TRO against NIH cap. www.forbes.com/sites/michae...
- Musk has received $13B in government contracts over the last 5 yrs. With all his fuss about the $9B/yr in overhead to the more than 2,500 universities conducting lifesaving research, I am curious when he is going to turn DOGE on his own contracts and ‘efficiencies’. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...
- Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Looking forward to feedback. thebullshitmachines.com
- Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com
- Robert Jones, former Chancellor at the University of Illinois, will be the new President here at the University of Washington. news.uillinois.edu/view/7815/71...
- Applications are open for the inaugural Disinformation Summer Institute. This 3-day, intensive summer institute is intended for graduate students, post-docs, assistant professors or early career researchers seeking to better understand and address disinformation. More info: disinfoinstitute.org
- TrueMedia.org: new non-partisan, non-profit effort to detect manipulated media geekwire.com/2024/new-ai-...
- Silicon Valley hype oozes from this video (eg, ‘understanding of science’, ‘reasoning capabilities’, ‘reads 200k papers’) but the re-graphing tool is pretty nice. If it can do that consistently and reliably, worth trying out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPiO...
- Good to see philanthropies leaning into local news. Path Forward will award more than $500 million to revitalize local news: www.macfound.org/press/press-...
- Frightening how easy disinformation has become: youtu.be/cwGdkrc9i2Y?...
- Have large language models developed analogical reasoning skills? Maybe, but our simple experiments demonstrate otherwise: arxiv.org/abs/2308.16118
