Updates from I2SC

Date : October 17, 2025 Abstract: Recent advances in generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), have renewed interest in Natural Language Processing (NLP) across many disciplines. One such field is survey methodology, which increasingly applies NLP methods (e.g., simulating survey respondents with LLMs) and, in turn, offers valuable insights back to NLP (e.g., improving annotation task design and evaluation). In this talk, I argue for stronger synergies between NLP and survey methodology, outlining both the opportunities and the obstacles at their intersection. I will focus on two use cases where we see both synergies and tensions: (1) reusing survey questions developed for humans to probe political biases in LLMs, and (2) assessing which people LLMs can simulate and provide personalized assistance to. Beyond these use cases, I highlight broader challenges that interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners must grapple with — from evaluating the social competencies of ...

  ✨ This Saturday, October 11th, Interdisciplinary Institute for Societal Computing (I2SC) hosted a Kids Vibe Code Hackathon — and the creativity these young minds brought was nothing short of inspiring! Without much input from us, the kids jumped right into building their own projects using platforms from Lovable Dev and Rosebud AI . Their ideas were wildly imaginative and impressively executed: 🎮 Halloween-themed jump-and-run games 🌲 Visualizations of unhealthy forests 🖐️ Games using hand tracking and camera input 🧩 Creative mashups of game mechanics A big shout-out to the mentors who supported the event with their time and enthusiasm: Ruta Binkyte · Adish Singla · Hamayoon Behmanush · Vikram Kamath A big shout out to the organizers of the Kids Hackathon Worldwide initiative ( https://kidsaicoding.com/kids-hackathon-worldwide ), we’re grateful for the inspiration behind it. It was incredible to see how much the children could create with minimal guidance — a remi...

Every two years, statisticians of the world convene to exchange on the latest developments at the World Statistics Congress organised by the International Statistical Institute (ISI). This year, Till Koebe, postdoctoral researcher at I2SC, attended the conference in The Hague, Netherlands and presented work done as part of the master thesis of Nicolas Regel, Master student in Computer Science at Saarland University, on "Cost-Optimal Sampling in Augmented Surveys using Reinforcement Learning​": Besides enjoying local cultural performances (see below) Till also met old colleagues, such as Florian Meinfelder from Bamberg University, and Ulrich Rendtel from Freie University Berlin (his second PhD supervisor) and PhD candidates from Bamberg and Berlin. He was also very delighted to meet Trevor Hastie, among others author of the seminal book "Elements of Statistical Learning", which was a big help for Till during his studies: WSC, see you again in two years! As promised...

We are looking for a managing director for our upcoming project, the SOUNDS observatory.   Geschäftsführerin / Geschäftsführer des Großprojekts SOUNDS (m/w/d) Kennziffer : N2201 Vergütung : nach TV-L, Entgeltgruppe E14 Beschäftigungsumfang : 100 % der tariflichen Arbeitszeit For more details and application process: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/upload/verwaltung/stellen/Nichtwissenschaftler/N2201_GF_SOUNDS.pdf  More details on SOUNDS: https://www.sounds-observatory.org/  

Design thinking is a human-centered approach which puts people at the center for solving their real-life problems. Originally, Design Thinking was popularized in product design and services. It brings perspectives from multiple disciplines, for instance problem framing and creativity from cognitive psychology, learning by doing from constructivism, Norman's design principles from human-centered design, and understanding interconnected parts of complex real-life problems as systems thinking. Design thinking brings better learning and teaching experiences for students and educators by mapping knowledge with real-world challenges. It puts learners and educators at the center by emphasizing empathy to understand the learners' needs, clearly defining the problems they face, ideating a range of solutions for each problem, prototyping tangible solutions, and evaluating through an iterative process. Design thinking encourages student-centric innovations by training learners with creati...

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Stockholm Syndrome. It’s been used countless times in movies and TV series, rather comedically to exaggerate the phenomenon. It’s introduced to explain why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors, with the underlying assumption that emotions can develop between captors and captives during intimate time together. Sounds wild, right? This syndrome is, however, not proven, nor is it part of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as a formal diagnosis. And people have now raised concerns about the syndrome and how to de-influence it. But it’s still part of the curriculum and is widely known and used by the general population. So, I wanted to understand how it came about and why it’s so popular despite being wrong. And what I found was an extremely interesting story. To set the scene, it's August 23, 1973, in Stockholm. Jan-Erik Olsson, who’s a lifelong criminal, walked into the bank, pulled out a gun from...