Jess Thompson

We audited one of the most critical pieces of modern AI alignment: reward models. We find consistent and persistent biases and trace them back to the pretraining stage, challenging the premises of common approaches to alignment based on finetuning on human preferences. Accepted at #ICLR2026

Psych&CNS@NYU seeking t-track asst prof with outstanding record in human neurosci. Examples of areas (but not limited to): attention, perception, decision making, memory, executive function. Research incorporating neuroimaging (e.g. fMRI) preferred. Appl deadline Nov 15. apply.interfolio.com/195772

Re-post 🔁 is appreciated! #neurojobs: we’re looking for new team members to join us @cmc-unit.bsky.social!
If you’d like to study decision-making in naturalistic & embodied contexts (integrating RL, RNNs & cross-species data analysis) in a cool & collaborative research environment 😎, check 👇

I’m looking for two PhD students with competitively awarded scholarships: 1) Cognitive maps for causal inference warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... 2) Brain mechanisms of working memory removal and repetitive negative thinking midlandsmhndtp.ac.uk/project/2027...

Looking for a PhD related to intrinsic motivation? Look no further than this amazing opportunity to work with the brilliant Franziska Brändle on fascinating questions about what we find fun and engaging, using computational modelling and large scale naturalistic datasets. Deadline: 20 October 2026

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.

Broke: all models are wrong but some are useful Woke: models are useful because they are wrong

Looking for a PhD related to intrinsic motivation? Look no further than this amazing opportunity to work with the brilliant Franziska Brändle on fascinating questions about what we find fun and engaging, using computational modelling and large scale naturalistic datasets. Deadline: 20 October 2026

✨New PhD Position!✨ Come and work with us on understanding cognition with a mix of cognitive modelling and ultrasound neuromodulation! More info on the lab & position: mic-lab.de/positions/ph... Official job ad: tinyurl.com/miclab-phd 🙏Please RT - deadline is Oct 14 ‼️

Great opportunity for a philosopher of psychology/cognitive science! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSS513/l... #philsci

📢 We are hiring a full professor in "Intelligence in Biological and Artificial Systems". Come join us at Germany's first and largest cognitive science program. Please share far and wide, and get in touch with any questions. www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/universit...

Interested in trade union organising? Come work with us at Oxford UCU! Application deadline 16 June. Branch Administrator and Organiser (permanent, full time) University and College Union, University of Oxford branch www.ucu.org.uk/vacancies#BAO1 @oxforducu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk #tradeunion #HE

Join us for Cognitive Science for Climate Change on May 26 at ENS Paris 🌍 Exploring how cognitive science and computational modelling can help us better understand climate action. Conveniently scheduled for those coming to Paris for #SBDM. 🎟️ More details: www.eventbrite.com/e/billets-co...

The lesson for all the students out there is that science is a community project. Most of us make individually small contributions to this project. Success is measured at the collective level. Many of our professional (and personal) dysfunctions could be fixed by more fully embracing this view.

Reward models (RMs) are supposed to represent human values. But RMs are NOT blank slates – they inherit measurable biases from their base models that stubbornly persist through preference training. #ICLR2026 🧵

"the academic alerted the University of the situation, and asked for protection as well as restrictive measures to be implemented. The University did not formally investigate the professor, and did not restrict his access to premises or remove his emeritus status." cherwell.org/2026/02/01/o...

once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions

Bluesky > X for science

When does new learning interfere with existing knowledge in people and ANNs? Great to have this out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com Work with @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @tsonj.bsky.social, Lukas Braun and Jan Grohn www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super happy to see this review out! We ask why people are so reluctant to abandon goals and how this commitment could be understood computationally. Work with Jill O'Reilly & @yaelniv.bsky.social

I'll be in Montreal October 26-27! Let me know if anyone wants to meet up!

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

I had an illuminating interaction with a colleague who said that they try to find time to do a few paper reviews per year. It made me realize that different researchers have widely varying expectations about reviewing, probably because there are no public norms.

In other news, I am now a ✨ COXI ✨ (cognitive scientist in Osnabrück, Germany) www.uni-osnabrueck.de/en/campus-li... I'll be looking for PhD students & postdocs later this year, so watch this space if combining cognitive modelling, EEG & tFUS to study flexible cognition sounds exciting to you 🚀

I’m recruiting committee members for the Technical Program Committee at #CCN2026. Please apply if you want to help make submission, review & selection of contributed work (Extended Abstracts & Proceedings) more useful for everyone! 🌐 Helps to have: programming/communications/editorial experience.

PsyArXiv is seeking new moderators to help combat an increase in AI submissions! If you've ever posted a preprint to PsyArXiv, please consider joining. Minimum commitment 1h/month, there's a training session this Monday @ 1pm ET. More info here: forms.gle/9LB1rEtxHAeZ... #PsychSciSky

For no reason, I thought now might be a good moment to reshare my 2021 article arguing that the #CCN and #NeuroAI communities can avoid reinventing the wheel by building on existing philosophy of science about scientific progress and explanation. journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.... #CCN2025

Check out this great summary of our satellite event on science for social good by @georgiaturner.bsky.social! ♥️ I also wrote up a transcript of my opening remarks thompsonj.github.io/CCN_for_soci... We are the gardeners of our scientific ecosystem. What will we grow?

Blown away by Ellie Pavlick's talk at #CCN2025 about compositionality in transformers. More work like this at CCN please.

@davidpoeppel.bsky.social points out the elephant in the conference: whichever direction of the planet we look, things are bad. Einstein, chomsky and arendt point out to us that silence is not neutral 👏 #CCN2025

Inspiring quotes about the state of the world and our role in it as scientists at the beginning of David Poeppel's keynote at #CCN2025

If you are planning to attend #CCN2025 in Amsterdam next week and are interested in recurrent network models of decision making, please join our Satellite Workshop on Monday at 3pm. We'll have @summerfieldlab.bsky.social , @veronicachelu.bsky.social and many more! sites.google.com/view/rnnsmak...

Waiting for the train to Amsterdam for #CCN2025. Looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new connections. Hit me up if you want to chat about (modeling) collective intelligence, philosophy of science, communication, care, reward models, or the epistemic risks of scientific AI.

In this world on fire, with misinformation, science and democracy under threat, how can scientists be a force for social good? This Monday in Amsterdam, join @weijima.bsky.social @tsonj.bsky.social Ili Ma + me for an interactive workshop as part of #CCN2025 anneurai.net/2025/05/05/c...

My first PhD paper - with @lhuntneuro.bsky.social and @summerfieldlab.bsky.social - is now out in @plosbiology.org! We ask: how do humans (and deep neural networks) navigate flexibly even in unfamiliar environments, such as a new city? Link: plos.io/45uSwNm 🧵 (1/6)

📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢 🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method. Please RT www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

After two really enjoyable days at #Metascience2025, I wrote about how one 🌶️ moment encapsulated the controversy over metascience's issues 📑, inclusivity 🤗and future public value 🔮 #STS #AcademicSky All feedback welcome on here, or by email 😀 warrenpearce.pika.page/posts/what-i...

In this Animation, the psychologist Alison Gopnik makes a case that caring for the vulnerable puts us in touch with our deepest humanity @alisongopnik.bsky.social buff.ly/ikQ2g1E

Inspired (partly) by ‪@jontreadway.bsky.social 's tweet thread, I have come up with a highly subjective and tentative map of different strands in metascience. It is intended as a starter to begin talking about what people (want to) include in metascience. #metascience2025

Shocked by how quickly the chair @profgeraintrees.bsky.social was to completely dismiss/refuse a question about labour issues and lack of public accountability for commercially developed AI at a panel on AI in science at #metascience2025. Let the panelists decide how they want to respond.