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So I’m a reviewer for an AI conference with seven papers to review. I came across one paper early on that had some pretty egregious sounding LLM text in the intro. You know the kind, where the sparkling adjectives augment the points in the text, sometimes hiding them behind flowery text – and the use of dashes – in ways that don’t add value to someone delving into the document,

ChatPDF provides an AI detector that is probably based on perplexity along the lines of GPTzero, and it flagged it – 100% AI generated. But since then, I’ve been trying out on the sections of text that are well written, but do not have that AI “smell.” Turns out that almost every paper is using LLMs for writing, at least according to the detector.

Can We Fix Social Media? Testing Prosocial Interventions using Generative Social Simulation

• Social media platforms have been widely linked to societal harms, including rising polarization and the erosion of constructive debate. Can these problems be mitigated through prosocial interventions? We address this question using a novel method – generative social simulation – that embeds Large Language Models within Agent-Based Models to create socially rich synthetic platforms. We create a minimal platform where agents can post, repost, and follow others. We find that the resulting following-networks reproduce three well-documented dysfunctions: (1) partisan echo chambers; (2) concentrated influence among a small elite; and (3) the amplification of polarized voices – creating a ‘social media prism’ that distorts political discourse. We test six proposed interventions, from chronological feeds to bridging algorithms, finding only modest improvements – and in some cases, worsened outcomes. These results suggest that core dysfunctions may be rooted in the feedback between reactive engagement and network growth, raising the possibility that meaningful reform will require rethinking the foundational dynamics of platform architecture.

Tasks

• Let’s see if we can get papers 390 and 416 done today. Finished 390. Read 416, which is cool
• DM Karl – done
• Ping Brett Goldstein and/or Brett V. Benson, maybe a workshop on this? Done
• Send the updates back to Vanessa
• Send email about LLC to PPL