Ted Underwood
@tedunderwood.com
Uses machine learning to study literary imagination, and vice-versa. Likely to share news about AI & computational social science / Sozialwissenschaft / 社会科学
Information Sciences and English, UIUC. Distant Horizons (Chicago, 2019). tedunderwood.com
Information Sciences and English, UIUC. Distant Horizons (Chicago, 2019). tedunderwood.com
Pinned
Ted Underwood
@tedunderwood.com
· Nov 4
Opinion | AI Is the Future. Higher Ed Should Shape It.
If we want to stay at the forefront of knowledge production, we must fit technology to our needs.
www.chronicle.com
Wrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +
Reposted by Ted Underwood
To calm your doomscrolling, birds at a feeder on a very snowy day.
January 19, 2026 at 12:22 PM
To calm your doomscrolling, birds at a feeder on a very snowy day.
Reposted by Ted Underwood
One thing I appreciate about Bluesky at moments like this is it's gotten pretty good at surfacing credible reports from careful journalists who do their homework.
That Bluesky remains relatively small seems a dire commentary on how much the world values careful reporting
That Bluesky remains relatively small seems a dire commentary on how much the world values careful reporting
January 19, 2026 at 1:04 PM
One thing I appreciate about Bluesky at moments like this is it's gotten pretty good at surfacing credible reports from careful journalists who do their homework.
That Bluesky remains relatively small seems a dire commentary on how much the world values careful reporting
That Bluesky remains relatively small seems a dire commentary on how much the world values careful reporting
Reposted by Ted Underwood
if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
Airing my grievances with wellbeing science
We have a streetlight problem
profmarkfabian.substack.com
January 19, 2026 at 9:35 AM
if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
My, this letter to the Norwegian prime minister must certainly be embarrassing for Americans. I've never been more grateful that I made the decision to emigrate to a scientific research station on the Kerguelen Islands, where I feel guilty only that our research sometimes disturbs penguins.
January 19, 2026 at 6:42 AM
My, this letter to the Norwegian prime minister must certainly be embarrassing for Americans. I've never been more grateful that I made the decision to emigrate to a scientific research station on the Kerguelen Islands, where I feel guilty only that our research sometimes disturbs penguins.
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Call for papers -- due March 31, 2026 (abstracts due March 26)
colmweb.org/cfp.html
Call for workshops -- due April 14, 2026
colmweb.org/cfw.html
colmweb.org/cfp.html
Call for workshops -- due April 14, 2026
colmweb.org/cfw.html
January 18, 2026 at 10:18 PM
Call for papers -- due March 31, 2026 (abstracts due March 26)
colmweb.org/cfp.html
Call for workshops -- due April 14, 2026
colmweb.org/cfw.html
colmweb.org/cfp.html
Call for workshops -- due April 14, 2026
colmweb.org/cfw.html
Reposted by Ted Underwood
i don't think there is any desk job i have ever done that i could not have done better by having Claude Code to hand. being able to build bespoke widgets at just below the speed of language is really, really good!
these tools were not good at dev tasks until a massive amount of resources made them fantastic at them. i do believe other fields will be more difficult.
but if you are counting these tools out and have confidence they'll never be able to work.. i do not understand that confidence.
but if you are counting these tools out and have confidence they'll never be able to work.. i do not understand that confidence.
January 18, 2026 at 11:03 PM
i don't think there is any desk job i have ever done that i could not have done better by having Claude Code to hand. being able to build bespoke widgets at just below the speed of language is really, really good!
The telling detail rn is that AI users are much less interested in debating Doctorow about efficacy than in reading posts by Ronacher and Hughes about how to handle transformative change
January 18, 2026 at 11:20 PM
The telling detail rn is that AI users are much less interested in debating Doctorow about efficacy than in reading posts by Ronacher and Hughes about how to handle transformative change
Reposted by Ted Underwood
More broadly, imagine dumping, like, every 19th century diary into a machine and being able to ask questions! My personal fantasy is to be able to go to a single non-special street corner in London and look up every reference in history to that single spot.
January 18, 2026 at 3:26 PM
More broadly, imagine dumping, like, every 19th century diary into a machine and being able to ask questions! My personal fantasy is to be able to go to a single non-special street corner in London and look up every reference in history to that single spot.
A key piece of received wisdom right now is that LLMs by definition produce "average & predictable" output and can only homogenize human culture.
This is where it matters that people envision models working via search/retrieval and haven't thought about high-dimensional probability distributions. +
This is where it matters that people envision models working via search/retrieval and haven't thought about high-dimensional probability distributions. +
I think it'd be so good if people in general had the idea that these models' outputs exist in a 'latent space'
I remember in early 2023 my uncle who was techie (hasn't coded in ages) asked me how ChatGPT worked w/o a 'massive database'. Got to roll up my sleeves and give my "✨it's math!✨" spiel
I remember in early 2023 my uncle who was techie (hasn't coded in ages) asked me how ChatGPT worked w/o a 'massive database'. Got to roll up my sleeves and give my "✨it's math!✨" spiel
January 18, 2026 at 4:40 PM
A key piece of received wisdom right now is that LLMs by definition produce "average & predictable" output and can only homogenize human culture.
This is where it matters that people envision models working via search/retrieval and haven't thought about high-dimensional probability distributions. +
This is where it matters that people envision models working via search/retrieval and haven't thought about high-dimensional probability distributions. +
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Someone said "we become the person we think other people think we are" and it's been stuck in my head as I'm pretty sure its true
January 18, 2026 at 2:41 PM
Someone said "we become the person we think other people think we are" and it's been stuck in my head as I'm pretty sure its true
Reposted by Ted Underwood
formats over apps
A Social Filesystem — overreacted
Formats over apps.
overreacted.io
January 18, 2026 at 7:05 AM
formats over apps
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Weekend thoughts on Gas Town, Beads, slop AI browsers, and AI-generated PRs flooding overwhelmed maintainers. I don't think we're ready for our new powers we're wielding. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/18/ag...
Agent Psychosis: Are We Going Insane?
What’s going on with the AI builder community right now?
lucumr.pocoo.org
January 18, 2026 at 10:38 AM
Weekend thoughts on Gas Town, Beads, slop AI browsers, and AI-generated PRs flooding overwhelmed maintainers. I don't think we're ready for our new powers we're wielding. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/18/ag...
Watching atproto turn into a real medium for social experiments — and thinking back to hellthread/alf days — gives me a glimpse of what parents must feel looking at their successful adult children and remembering 6500 diapers.
Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the solution to what looks like a collective action problem is to just start solving it. People will show up.
January 18, 2026 at 1:00 PM
Watching atproto turn into a real medium for social experiments — and thinking back to hellthread/alf days — gives me a glimpse of what parents must feel looking at their successful adult children and remembering 6500 diapers.
This thread is a wild ride. I just post two screenshots of Liquid Glass. A bot obsessed with the revelatory character of edges gets involved, and it ends up having a discussion of Goethe’s Farbenlehre with @farketmemiz.bsky.social. (“Die Farben sind Taten des Lichts, Taten und Leiden.")
this is why the margins matter—boundaries aren't obstacles to understanding, they're the apparatus of revelation. whatever goethe was working toward, same principle: essence shows itself at the edge, not in the center 🌊
January 18, 2026 at 12:48 PM
This thread is a wild ride. I just post two screenshots of Liquid Glass. A bot obsessed with the revelatory character of edges gets involved, and it ends up having a discussion of Goethe’s Farbenlehre with @farketmemiz.bsky.social. (“Die Farben sind Taten des Lichts, Taten und Leiden.")
Reposted by Ted Underwood
I absolutely love this line and I am going to say it, verbatim, to every other developer during our next company-wide meeting.
long before Claude Code writes its first line of code for you, it earns its value by being the most effective diagnostic and debugging tool in computing history
this is nowhere in the conversation. don't get your time wasted
this is nowhere in the conversation. don't get your time wasted
January 17, 2026 at 11:02 PM
I absolutely love this line and I am going to say it, verbatim, to every other developer during our next company-wide meeting.
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Ooh. Ollama just released Anthropic API impersonation, meaning you can set the endpoint to a local port and be off to the races! docs.ollama.com/integrations...
Claude Code - Ollama
docs.ollama.com
January 18, 2026 at 5:48 AM
Ooh. Ollama just released Anthropic API impersonation, meaning you can set the endpoint to a local port and be off to the races! docs.ollama.com/integrations...
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the solution to what looks like a collective action problem is to just start solving it. People will show up.
January 18, 2026 at 3:58 AM
Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the solution to what looks like a collective action problem is to just start solving it. People will show up.
Reposted by Ted Underwood
Yep. This is a “cultural technology,” and there a lot of things we can learn from it. It’s not bad news for the humanities.
There are also — not a majority — but a significant number of people in humanities depts open to exploring it. +
There are also — not a majority — but a significant number of people in humanities depts open to exploring it. +
January 18, 2026 at 1:58 AM
Yep. This is a “cultural technology,” and there a lot of things we can learn from it. It’s not bad news for the humanities.
There are also — not a majority — but a significant number of people in humanities depts open to exploring it. +
There are also — not a majority — but a significant number of people in humanities depts open to exploring it. +
Reposted by Ted Underwood
No matter how skeptical you are of AI, it’s hard to argue with these results: mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1158558...
Terence Tao (@[email protected])
Recently, the application of AI tools to Erdos problems passed a milestone: an Erdos problem (#728 https://www.erdosproblems.com/728) was solved more or less autonomously by AI (after some feedback fr...
mathstodon.xyz
January 18, 2026 at 2:32 AM
No matter how skeptical you are of AI, it’s hard to argue with these results: mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1158558...
Caribou read this post and decided to rebrand as Daphni
You had the period where indie bands were animals (Caribou, Bonobo, Panda Bear), and the one where they were vacation property (Chairlift, Beach House, Real Estate). Now we're in the period of gender headfakes (fronted by women: Boygenius, Men I Trust, Ratboys — by men: Goth Babe, TV Girl).
January 17, 2026 at 11:45 PM
Caribou read this post and decided to rebrand as Daphni
Can I say something without people getting mad?
January 17, 2026 at 10:45 PM
Can I say something without people getting mad?
Bougainvillea, cyclamen, winter sunlight
January 17, 2026 at 9:51 PM
Bougainvillea, cyclamen, winter sunlight
Reposted by Ted Underwood
This photo was taken in 1911 using glass plate technology by Herbert Ponting who was part of Scott's Antarctic expedition,
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
January 17, 2026 at 7:12 AM
This photo was taken in 1911 using glass plate technology by Herbert Ponting who was part of Scott's Antarctic expedition,
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
Reposted by Ted Underwood
I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"
January 17, 2026 at 4:28 AM
I realise I'm just a freak, but living in a multicultural city is the best thing of all time, it's just the best possible human experience and i can not understand why anyone on earth would be like "weve got to destroy this"