Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 7

Nowadays, every single AAAI publishes more papers per year than have ever appeared in, say, Social Choice and Welfare (ca. 2k papers since 1984) or Games and Economic Behavior (ca. 3k papers since 1989). There’s just no way that so many papers deserve to be published. In any area.

2 3

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 7

AAAI 2026 has received more than 29k submissions. Peer-reviewing is completely broken for AI. It’s not only the well-documented issues, such as self-nominated PC members, mismatched referees, useless reports, fraudulent submissions, low-quality papers, etc.

1 5

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 7

Today's post by the single finest Nobel Peace Prize candidate ever.

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 6

That one's even better.
youtu.be/tLQbpCGqizM

WATCH: Envoy Witkoff calls Trump 'single finest' Nobel Prize candidate ever

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour

youtu.be

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 6

youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws

Darth Vader "I find your lack of faith disturbing" - HD1080p - Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope

YouTube video by Star Jedi 951

youtu.be

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Sep 6

Thank you, Lord Vader, for hosting us.
youtu.be/IGpXnDiRia8

Trump Hosts Tech CEOs From Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google And OpenAI At White House | 10 News

YouTube video by 10 News

youtu.be

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Apr 23

Ironically, the biggest obstacle to broader adoption of LLMs seems to be their lack of reliability, a trait that is otherwise characteristic of computers.
Like the worst of us, they just make up facts rather than admit they don’t know. I appreciate anyone who admits they don’t know something.

3

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Apr 8

Borda strikes back.

3

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Apr 8

Very impressed by ChatGPT4o's new and improved image generation capabilities.

1 2

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Apr 3

www.techdirt.com/2025/04/03/t...

Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day&#8…

www.techdirt.com

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Apr 1

Really hard to tell April Fool's jokes from genuine news this year.
US regrets that far-right extremist Marine Le Pen is convicted of fraud. Trump abandons money laundering law. Musk pays millions to Wisconsin voters. Innocent father from Maryland accidentally deported to El Salvador mega prison.

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Mar 21

Happy to see that people in machine learning (ML) are drawing on results from social choice theory. Especially maximal lotteries (ML) are getting some attention because of their robustness against clones. I recently compiled a topical bibliography of my ML papers: www.cs.cit.tum.de/en/dss/brand...

🔆 Maximal Lotteries

www.cs.cit.tum.de

1 7

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 28

A Special Issue of Social Choice Welfare on Fair Public Decision Making: Allocating Budgets, Seats, and Probability, edited by Haris Aziz, Edith Elkind, Jérôme Lang, and myself has just appeared.
link.springer.com/journal/355/...

Social Choice and Welfare | Volume 64, issue 1

Volume 64, issue 1 articles listing for Social Choice and Welfare

link.springer.com

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 27

youtu.be/jWJVMoe7OY0
The fact that all these people have been released from prison epitomizes the absurdity of our times.
It was the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history, with some individuals receiving sentences of up to 22 years.

Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol | Visual Investigations

YouTube video by The New York Times

youtu.be

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 7

Fact-checkers will be very busy for the next four years.

edition.cnn.com/2025/01/07/p...

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about January 6, Europe, NATO and Canada | CNN Politics

President-elect Donald Trump made numerous false claims during a wide-ranging Tuesday news conference in Florida, many of them related to foreign affairs and international trade. Here is a fact check ...

edition.cnn.com

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 7

In other news, Trump announced he could forcefully turn Canada into the US’ 51st state, doesn't rule out military action to take control of Panama and Greenland, NATO partners need to pay 5% (rather than 2%), and threatens that "all hell will break out" in Middle East.

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 7

"Donald Trump will be suspended from Facebook and Instagram indefinitely and at least until the end of his time in office" (Mark Zuckerberg, 7 Jan 2021).

"We're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world." (Mark Zuckerberg, 7 Jan 2025).

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 6

And you can use LLMs to generate all these translations 😉
Any specific examples you encountered?

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Jan 2

Best thing about the machine learning hype: academic spam can be identified much easier. Whenever a suspicious email contains DL, ML, or AI, it can be safely deleted.

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 27

During ski season, there are more Dutch people in the Alps than in the Netherlands.

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 24

I think I‘d be more comfortable with microblogging platforms if the character limit was more like 3000 rather than 300 characters.

(Hooray! At least I managed to get across this point within a single message.)

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

Meanwhile, tech billionaires from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and OpenAI have traveled to the president-elect’s residence in Florida and promised to support his inauguration with $1 million donations.

Happy New Year!

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

AfD is an uprising far-right extremist party that is under surveillance by German intelligence for being anti-constitutional and tied to Nazi organizations. So far, all German parties—across the entire political spectrum—have ruled out forming coalitions with AfD.

1 1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

He also interferes with international politics, calls the German chancellor an “incompetent fool” who “should resign immediately” and vulgarly insults the former female German chancellor. He writes on his social media platform that “only AfD can save Germany”.

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

after he was defeated in the previous presidential election). The billionaire, who is not an elected official, now meets with world leaders and congressmen who say it feels like he is the ‚prime minister‘.

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

becomes a personal advisor of the president-elect (who btw was impeached twice, convicted of felonies, granted immunity from prosecution by supreme court judges that he appointed himself, and vowed to pardon hundreds of violent rioters who stormed the US capitol

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

Moreover, every 24 hours, he pays $1 million to registered voters of swing states who sign a petition. He is then appointed to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (which aims at cutting funding for government agencies that regulate his businesses) and

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 23

Nobody would believe this story if it were fictional: The (literally) richest man in the world buys the largest social media platform in the world and uses it to sway the presidential election of the largest democracy by systematically spreading falsehoods.

1

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 1

One year ago, I uploaded the videos from my Computational Social Choice class to YouTube (almost 30 hours). Most of it is non-computational “classic” social choice with a special focus on Condorcet extensions.
t.co/O3KCZQTcLC

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOfTMPqb4h4YpejIw7acMsdUnBm51a-FD

t.co

Felix Brandt @felix-brandt.bsky.social · Dec 1

The limits of p are known. When m→ ∞, p goes to 0 for any n. When m=5 and n→ ∞, the limit is:

1