Arvind Narayanan
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randomwalker.bsky.social
Arvind Narayanan
@randomwalker.bsky.social
23K followers 100 following 140 posts
Princeton computer science prof. I write about the societal impact of AI, tech ethics, & social media platforms. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/

BOOK: AI Snake Oil. https://www.aisnakeoil.com/
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randomwalker.bsky.social
Arvind Narayanan @randomwalker.bsky.social · Dec 18
Excited to share that AI Snake Oil is one of Nature's 10 best books of 2024! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The whole first chapter is available online:
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
We hope you find it useful.
Book cover
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
carlbergstrom.com
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.
October 24, 2025 at 12:47 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princeton.edu
On the latest episode of @capitalisnt.bsky.social, @randomwalker.bsky.social talks about why he believes the transformative impact of AI is overstated and how hype can get pushed faster than reality can deliver.
What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About AI, with Arvind Narayanan | Capitalisn't
Every major technological revolution has come with a bubble: railroads, electricity, dot-com. Is it AI’s turn? With investments skyrocketing and market valuations reaching the trillions, the stakes ar...
bit.ly
October 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
anildash.com
The "normal" framing is so key — @randomwalker.bsky.social gave us all such a useful way of articulating a valuable idea in this discussion. www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-norm...
AI as Normal Technology
A new paper that we will expand into our next book
www.normaltech.ai
October 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetoncitp.bsky.social
📢📢 Call for federal employees for the AI Precepts in Washington, DC. Learn from experts Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social), Mihir Kshirsagar, Peter Henderson (@peterhenderson.bsky.social, & Sayash Kapoor (@sayash.bsky.social). Deadline to apply: Fri, Oct. 3

mailchi.mp/princeton.ed...
Invitation to Apply: Princeton AI Policy Precepts in Washington, DC
mailchi.mp
September 26, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetonupress.bsky.social
From two of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, what you need to know about #AI—and how to defend yourself against bogus AI claims and products.

AI Snake Oil by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social is now available in #paperback: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Paperback cover of AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
September 23, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetonupress.bsky.social
Our #podcast series on Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit continues with Arvind Narayanan who explores the subject of bullshit in #AI.

press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-tr...

@randomwalker.bsky.social @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social @calebzakarin.bsky.social
September 8, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetoncitp.bsky.social
📣 Prof Arvind Narayanan (@randomwalker.bsky.social) is hiring a Princeton University undergrad for a Video Editor & Production Assistant this semester to help with his brand new YouTube channel @ArvindOnAI

Getting started right away so feel free to comment + share with students! Link to apply 👇
September 3, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
eff.org
Even superintelligent AI cannot simply replace humans for most of what we do, nor can it perfect or ruin our world unless we let it, AI Snake Oil’s @randomwalker.bsky.social tells EFF’s Cindy Cohn and @thejasonkelley.com on the new “How to Fix the Internet.”
Podcast Episode: Separating AI Hope from AI Hype
If you believe the hype, artificial intelligence will soon take all our jobs, or solve all our problems, or destroy all boundaries between reality and lies, or help us live forever, or take over the w...
www.eff.org
August 19, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
katygb.bsky.social
Great @eff.org podcast with @randomwalker.bsky.social, touching on his AI as Normal Technology paper w/ @sayash.bsky.social for our @knightcolumbia.org AI & Democratic Freedoms project. Short 🧵 of a few other papers related to this podcast discussion:
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
Podcast Episode: Separating AI Hope from AI Hype
If you believe the hype, artificial intelligence will soon take all our jobs, or solve all our problems, or destroy all boundaries between reality and lies, or help us live forever, or take over the w...
www.eff.org
August 15, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
reitman.bsky.social
Preach it, @randomwalker.bsky.social.

I've worked with so many nonprofits, and I think an organically-grown newsletter community is so, so valuable. It takes time, but it's worth it. substack.com/@aisnakeoil/...
Arvind Narayanan (@aisnakeoil)
Some people have asked me about the decision to start a newsletter rather than using other channels like op-eds. There's one key thing I've learned, and I made a stylized chart to explain it. If you b...
substack.com
August 12, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
alondra.bsky.social
What kind of AI governance do we need? Our new piece in @science.org answers this: we need policy grounded in evidence and built to generate more of it. Evidence-based policymaking is not a slogan—it’s a design challenge for democratic governance in the age of AI www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵
Advancing science- and evidence-based AI policy
Policy must be informed by, but also facilitate the generation of, scientific evidence
www.science.org
July 31, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
anshulkundaje.bsky.social
Fabulous post by @randomwalker.bsky.social & Sayash raising the same concern many of us have about whether we're on the right track with how we're using AI for science. Everyone should read it, take a deep breath & think through the implications.

www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s...
Could AI slow science?
Confronting the production-progress paradox
www.aisnakeoil.com
July 17, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
dia.bsky.social
I’m reading a very well written 2023 paper on social media recommender systems from @randomwalker.bsky.social I had completely forgotten that in the 00s “neither Facebook nor Twitter had the ability to reshare or retweet posts in your feed.”What a huge shift!

knightcolumbia.org/content/unde...
Understanding Social Media Recommendation Algorithms
knightcolumbia.org
July 10, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
zey.bsky.social
We’re hiring at Princeton on AI and society, working with Arvind Narayanan or me depending on fit.

I think current AI developments are all a huge deal but am very unexcited by current state of the AGI and/or AI safety discourse.

Please share as you see fit.

puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...
puwebp.princeton.edu
June 20, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
emollick.bsky.social
After consideration, I will post occasionally, but heavily censor what I share compared to other sites.

I tried making the transition, but talking about AI here is just really fraught in ways that are tough to mitigate & make it hard to have good discussions (the point of social!). Maybe it changes
May 26, 2025 at 4:25 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetonupress.bsky.social
For @newyorker.com, Joshua Rothman spoke with @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social, authors of AI Snake Oil and a recently published paper “AI as Normal Technology”, which argues that practical obstacles will slow AI’s uses and potential: www.newyorker.com/culture/open...
Two Paths for A.I.
The technology is complicated, but our choices are simple: we can remain passive, or assert control.
www.newyorker.com
May 28, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
jjvincent.bsky.social
clear, depressing set of observations from @randomwalker.bsky.social - "The decline of reading-for-pleasure (due to video) and reading-for-information (due to AI) will accelerate each other, as reading text without an intermediary will come to be seen as a chore."
"A hypothesis on the accelerating decline of reading: * Broadly speaking, people read for pleasure/entertainment and for learning/obtaining information. * Reading for pleasure has been declining for a while and is being replaced by videos (very sharply among young people). This trend will surely continue. * Reading for obtaining information is getting intermediated by chatbots. We are in the very early stages of this shift, so I think people underappreciate the magnitude of what's coming. It's not just that AI replacing traditional web search. Even when it comes to reading news articles, business documents, or scientific papers, the vision that tech companies are pushing on us is AI summarization + synthesis + Q&A. * We don't have to accept this, but I predict that most people will. It's a tradeoff between speed/convenience and accuracy/depth of understanding — the same tradeoff that was once offered to us when it became possible to search the web to look up a quick fact as opposed to reading about the topic in depth in an encyclopedia. * Just as most people in most cases prefer a shallow web search over deeper reading, most people in most cases will prefer AI-intermediated access to knowledge. Traditional reading won't disappear, but people will do it vastly less often, except in hobbyist reading communities and professions where traditional reading is needed. * The decline of reading-for-pleasure (due to video) and reading-for-information (due to AI) will accelerate each other, as reading text without an intermediary will come to be seen as a chore. * Personally, I find this sad. But while it's tempting to moralize all this, I think that's unproductive. Yelling at individuals to resist new media has been done for centuries and has never worked. * Even if people individually rationally choose these tradeoffs, I think we collectively lose something; critical reading skills are arguably essential for a democracy. We need to figure out what to do about that.
May 22, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
lorenzspreen.bsky.social
New preprint with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social @randomwalker.bsky.social @orbenamy.bsky.social @lfoswaldo.bsky.social where we argue for a complex-system perspective to understand the causal effects of social media on society and for a triangulation of methods
arxiv.org/abs/2505.09254
Moving towards informative and actionable social media research
Social media is nearly ubiquitous in modern life, and concerns have been raised about its putative societal impacts, ranging from undermining mental health and exacerbating polarization to fomenting v...
arxiv.org
May 15, 2025 at 6:31 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
jbakcoleman.bsky.social
I'm excited that I can finally share what I've been working on for the past 9 months:

The United Nations 2025 Human Development Report: "A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI" 🧵

hdr.undp.org/content/huma...
May 6, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
neilturkewitz.bsky.social
“AGI is not a milestone because it is not actionable. A company declaring it has achieved, or is about to achieve, AGI has no implications for how businesses should plan, what safety interventions we need, or how policymakers should react.”
@randomwalker.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/aisnakeo...
AGI is not a milestone
There is no capability threshold that will lead to sudden impacts
open.substack.com
May 1, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
davekarpf.bsky.social
Okay just started @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social's new essay and this is 🔥🔥🔥.

"Resilience as the overarching approach to catastrophic risk" -- yes thank you exactly this.

kfai-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/c3...
April 24, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
princetonainews.bsky.social
We are hosting @reproml.org 2025 on Aug. 21. There will be invited talks, oral presentations, and poster sessions. Keynote speakers include @randomwalker.bsky.social, @soumithchintala.bsky.social, @jfrankle.com, @jessedodge.bsky.social, @stellaathena.bsky.social

Register now: bit.ly/4cP8vIq
text says "ML Reproducibility Challenge Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, August 21 2025"
April 24, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
mitshapingwork.bsky.social
In this clip from our event last week, @randomwalker.bsky.social describes how we can map out the landscape of AI along two dimensions: how well the AI tool works, and how harmful (or benign) it is.

Watch a full recording of the event: youtu.be/C3TqcUEFR58
April 24, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
biblioracle.bsky.social
IMO, the most important piece on AI of the last 6 months and I recommend it to everyone. A genuinely careful consideration of the technology and its intersections with culture and labor from @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social Authors of AI Snake Oil substack.com/home/post/p-...
AI as Normal Technology
A new paper that we will expand into our next book
substack.com
April 19, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Arvind Narayanan
manfrommolise.bsky.social
Truly thoughtful and essential analysis of the AI field from @randomwalker.bsky.social @sayash.bsky.social. States what many felt, but haven't articulated. Pairs well with Shazeda Ahmed's "epistemic culture of AI safety" and others' work on risk and anti-trust.

knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a...
AI as Normal Technology
knightcolumbia.org
April 17, 2025 at 4:25 PM