Doomscrolling Babel

Desk Rejections are Frustrating but Necessary

In response to the flood of very low-quality, often unreadable AI-generated papers, Computer Science venues have begun adopting stricter desk-rejection…

Oct 29 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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AI Comes for Peer Reviewing

A new paper by Gary King and Steven Worthington argues that, compared to very nicely compensated human reviews, “AI-generated article reviews are now…

Oct 23 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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Empiricism Comes for Mathematics

Something is rotten in the state of mathematics.

Oct 12 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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Of Mottes, Baileys, and Stochastic Parrots 🦜

Every six months, Twitter and Bluesky circle back to whether LLMs are “stochastic parrots,” though the debate has become increasingly confusing as…

Oct 2 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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September 2026

In Favor of (Some) Anthropomorphization of AI Systems

“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs…

Sep 8 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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July 2026

Science Should Be Open, For LLMs Too

Even if you think LLMs are bad for science, you should let them have access to research papers

Jul 25 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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June 2026

AI Slop Isn’t

AI slop is a silly term, and we should abandon it

Jun 19 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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AI Is Already Giving Medical Conclusions. Are They Any Good?

Today I will share a guest post by my student Hayoung Jung — he just started his own Substack, Systems Under Test, which you may want to follow if you…

Jun 12 • Hayoung Jung

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May 2026

The Slow Unmaking of the Web: From Short-Form Video to AI

“Kids these days” are alien to the optimistic origins of the Web.

May 31 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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The Anti-AI Trap

We shouldn't pretend that AI is only hype.

May 19 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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When the AI Assistant Becomes the Ad

This post describes our recent paper: Commercial Persuasion in AI-Mediated Conversations

May 9

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April 2026

Qualitative Research After the Interviewer Bot

A new hot take

Apr 18 • Manoel Horta Ribeiro

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