aaron bornstein

New lab preprint! @khoudary.bsky.social presents a tour-de-force: a new model of how uncertain expectations should help resolve uncertain sensations, supported by re-analysis of four experiments in monkeys (behavior, ephys) and humans (behavior, fMRI, EEG, intracranial) @meganakpeters.bsky.social

This is shockingly lazy work, making irresponsibly broad claims, by an author who is deeply entangled with the tech industry. Just because you *can* treat LLMs like a crystal ball, doesn't mean this counts as science.

I'm hiring a postdoc to start in summer/fall 2027! My lab uses computational social & cognitive science methods to explore how tech shapes knowledge & power: www.crockettlab.org You can submit an application here: apply.interfolio.com/195297. Review of apps starts Nov 20. Please share!

Too many people are calling on the community to "change how we value papers". Not enough people are posting "this is what we look for in our next hiring round".

"" ... the cumulative suppression of free speech led by the universities through imposing severe punishments and suspensions has ... result[ed] in what the [ACLU] described as “long-term damage to higher education.” "" newuniversity.org/2026/10/09/a...

The first in-prison Bachelor of Arts education program in the University of California system - @ucilifted.bsky.social - is hiring an experienced Statewide Service Coordinator. Apply by Friday, Oct. 16, here: ow.ly/7oel50ZVFT8 Formerly incarcerated individuals are highly encouraged to apply.

if you want to hear more of my thoughts in this space, I'll be giving a talk at #PSA2026 in the Friday morning symposium on "A “metabolic turn” in studying cognition and computation" -- more details available here! virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75802/...

very excited that the full version of this is now online! and especially so bc it includes a commentary by yours truly (with support from @aaronbornstein.bsky.social and @meganakpeters.bsky.social) - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"Over the last 15 years, the number of managers ... has increased by 64%. Senior professionals, an employee group that includes senior administrative analysts, information technology professionals, coaches and student health physicians, has more than doubled in that time."

Faculty say the University of California’s reputation for academic excellence and its contribution to new ideas and innovations is at stake.

I am recruiting graduate students for UCI's PhD in Cognitive Sciences - www.cogsci.uci.edu/graduate/pro... The lab's focus is on how relational structure and combinatorial reasoning is implemented in human brains and large language models--and if they are similar.

how does memory support perceptual decisions made under uncertainty? this question has scaffolded my entire PhD, and I'm so excited to share part of it in this ✨new preprint ✨ w/ @meganakpeters.bsky.social and @aaronbornstein.bsky.social! link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📣 NEW PREPRINT ALERT! 📣 📝Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... When choosing between options with multiple attributes, what does the brain actually compare - individual attributes or integrated option values? We combined EEG + eye-tracking to find out... and found evidence for the latter 🧠

Democrats do not only need to "go all in" on higher education. The party needs a genuine reset on its understanding of it. The last three Democratic administrations contributed to creating the crisis that higher ed is facing today.

The University of California is considering requiring the SAT again, based in part on claims that there's a burgeoning crisis in Calculus classes at Berkeley. I don't think the available evidence actually supports those claims. dhicks.github.io/posts/2026-0...

Last week, the world lost an extraordinary scholar and person. Alexander Reyes, a PhD student at UCI and my advisee, died after a severe illness. Please considering contributing to this fundraiser for his family, who have incurred tremendous expenses this summer, in his memory if you can.

The Working Class Face a ‘Class Ceiling’ in Elite Occupations PhDs whose parents did not graduate from college are less likely to land TT jobs at research universities & less likely to get tenure.They also earn less in the private sector and hold less management jobs www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/b...

I just wrote a @cftunion.bsky.social letter urging Governor Newsom to sign AB 713 – Equal access to campus job opportunities for students regardless of immigration status. Write one here: actionnetwork.org/letters/oppo...

I did a somewhat deep dive into the recent OpenAI and Anthropic "hacks" for an upcoming interview. IMO, the AI companies are better off running with the "rogue AI" story because the real story is actually pretty embarrassing. Like making your Wi-Fi password "wifi" embarrassing. 🧵

According to a meeting I was in, UMass estimates that if the capacity of these tools were maxed out by student, faculty, staff users, the total cost to the university would be $130,000/day, or about $47 million / year.

Reminder: AI companies talk up the fear of hypothetical superintelligent AI to distract you from the real, present dangers of AI that are happening right now

Is it more important for schools to train children to use chatbots -- or to equip kids to examine how A.I. is steering us? We delve into the global A.I. education/skilling debate in today's @nytimes.com's The World newsletter: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/w...

The University of California is in the midst of what looks to be a year-long debate about the use of SAT scores in undergraduate admissions. I wrote a FAQ that attempts to collect the facts that are relevant to this debate, and to dispel some common misconceptions: escholarship.org/uc/item/6kx2...

Now out in Hippocampus!! 📣💥 We examined anatomical inputs to the hippocampal region in six species - the tenrec, rat, marmoset, cat, macaque, and human - and found that hippocampal processing operates on fundamentally different types of information across species! (1/3) dx.doi.org/10.1002/hipo...

This summer I led a series of conversations in my lab about "AI" and our research. Some colleagues have shared "AI policies" for their labs and we discussed whether this would make sense for us. We decided it did not, and came up with a different approach. Please feel free to share & adapt!

UC Irvine Cognitive Sciences is hiring! Focus on social cognition, broadly construed. Come be my colleague :) I am not on the search committee but happy to talk about the campus, environment, careers, etc any time. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10411

“Weaponizing the IRS to attack colleges & universities that uphold & expand civil rights is outrageous. This is blatantly racist political coercion intended to deny minority students reparative opportunities to further their education.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

UC Irvine Cognitive Sciences is hiring! Focus on social cognition, broadly construed. Come be my colleague :) I am not on the search committee but happy to talk about the campus, environment, careers, etc any time. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10411

(belated) Congratulations to Dr. @dalezhou.bsky.social on winning a 2026 NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the @bbrfoundation.bsky.social! @mikeyassa.bsky.social @ucirvine.bsky.social @ucisocsci.bsky.social @ucibiosci.bsky.social

The overreaction to this Hugging Face thing is driving me nuts. Come flay me for being wrong but... 1/x

The conclusion is NOT "we need to debias LLMs" Besides that it's impossible, it also detracts from the point, which is: We shouldn't use machines to offload of the very cognition that is constitutive of the work to be done & supercharge existing inequities and injustices in the process. 🧵

newuniversity.org/2026/08/21/i...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has the facts dead wrong on involuntary commitment. Expanding commitment will lead to more suicides, more overdoses, and more violent crime charges. How do we know? Pittsburgh tried it, and that's what happened: nataliaemanuel.github.io/ne_website/F...

Work with Sam. You won't regret it.

As we all already know (but it is nice to have it confirmed by a whistleblower): these probes did not follow the mandated procedure and possessed little to no actual evidence. Yet the Columbia administration made a "deal" with Trump anyways. www.ms.now/news/frame-u...

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran calls on @ucirvine.bsky.social to reverse the punishments levied against Professors Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and Brook Haley. static1.squarespace.com/static/60108... This is not going away.

“Nobody is losing control of an emerging intelligence. They’re redirecting their own agency to the thing they are building.” It’s a myth, a self-affirming form of sense making: they take the action to build it, but insist on describing it as if they are passive witnesses to an inevitable force.

Congratulations to Dr. Ari @khoudary.bsky.social on a successful PhD defense! @meganakpeters.bsky.social and I are so proud of all you have accomplished and excited for what you will do at @pennmindcore.bsky.social!

New lab paper! @noraharhen.bsky.social and @catehartley.bsky.social investigate how children and adolescents differ in their use of episodic context for decision-making. Thread below.

How do we make good decisions with little experience? Adults can rely on memories of past choices. In our new study in @pnas.org we show kids & teens do something similar–but what they remember turns out to be quite different! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New lab paper! @noraharhen.bsky.social and @catehartley.bsky.social investigate how children and adolescents differ in their use of episodic context for decision-making. Thread below.

Maybe of use www.ru.nl/en/research/... cc @olivia.science