Kiran Garimella

Today, I'm releasing videos in the series on how I use AI in my life. The series is a collection of videos on how i use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for research, ideation, writing, image/video/audio generation, data collection, gaming, etc. youtube.com/playlist?list=…

This paper presents a nice methodology to audit automation by AI. By collecting data from 1,500 workers, 104 occupations, and 844 tasks they document mismatched expectations. This paper is a nice take on the thinking beyond AI risk = job loss. arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576

We (academics) complain a lot about X being a right wing echo chamber these days... (at least I do) This paper shows that Bluesky is an echo chamber in its own ways. Though surprisingly only 13% of the content is political (similar to other social media) arxiv.org/abs/2506.03443

This paper analyzes EU's AI act. The act’s research carve-outs are narrow. If you fine-tune a public model and share code, you’ve likely crossed into “provider” territory. They provide detailed understanding on what researchers should do to prepare. arxiv.org/abs/2506.03218

As AI is being increasingly used everywhere, we need to think of ways to measure and calibrate our dependence on AI (especially for students). I wrote about one way of thinking about it: open.substack.com/pub/gvrkiran/p…

LLMs are really good at working with street view imagery (e.g. to predict road safety, identify businesses, and other factors etc). This paper builds a pipeline for large scale urban analytics using LLMs. arxiv.org/abs/2506.02242

🧵 Academic job market season is almost here! There's so much rarely discussed—nutrition, mental and physical health, uncertainty, and more. I'm sharing my statements, essential blogs, and personal lessons here, with more to come in the upcoming weeks! ⬇️ (1/N)

Agentic AI is supposedly the future, and there are a lot of predictions of massive productivity gains. This paper evaluates does a meta-analysis of 84 studies: only 15 % pair accuracy with human outcomes. arxiv.org/abs/2506.02064

🚨 Study alert! We've developed a prototype that enables you to create personalized social media feeds using natural language rules and import them into Bluesky. Join our study to try out the tool, give feedback, and earn a $50 gift card! Sign up: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

Excited to co-organize the Bridging Human and LLM Annotations for Social Science tutorial at #ic2s2 tomorrow! Join us at 1:30pm CEST to learn how to combine Qualtrics+Prolific, MTurk, & LLMs for automated annotation and valid estimates. Code&materials: github.com/kristinagligor…

This paper presents some nice methods to scalably understand video content. They find a large prevalence of opiod use myths on youtube. Advances in VLMs are making such great analysis possible, which was not possible even 5 years ago. arxiv.org/abs/2506.00308

This is a great piece discussing the strenghts and weakenesses of community moderation on social media (like community notes) arxiv.org/abs/2505.20067

Interesting methods processing visual content from Instagram dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.114…

I wrote about the use of AI in influence operations/misinformation/propaganda based on reports from OpenAI and Anthropic. Good news: There are small scale trials of using AI but things seem to be under control. I talk about what can be done in the piece gvrkiran.substack.com/p/ai-assisted-…

This video is amazing. Talks about the future of generative video. It's not all 'brainrot' or 'slop'. there's going to be (or maybe already is) a huge potential for a new type of influencer.

One more paper in the FB 2020 election series Removing political ads from feeds found no measurable change in knowledge, turnout, polarization, or donations The big lever many campaigns rely on may be more about targeting loyalists than persuasion nber.org/papers/w33818

I will be in Singapore next week (July 21-25). I am mostly free on Thursday and Friday (24/25). If you are around and want to meet/chat, please let me know!

UC Berkeley is hiring an Assistant Professor this fall, with a preference for candidates in International Relations, American Politics, or Public Law. I am on the committee and glad to answer questions. Please apply! Link in next post.

This is an amazing paper about the agentic AI future. AI will move from a productivity booster to a market broker: when assistants bargain for us & service agents respond, search & coordination costs implode Standards, not algorithms will play a key role arxiv.org/abs/2505.15799

This paper shows that the legislative pendulum swinging sharply: once confined to authoritarian regimes, “lawful but awful” speech laws are now accelerating in liberal democracies. The debate has shifted from if to how to govern AI-age misinformation. arxiv.org/abs/2505.15067