Got to hang out with SUNY brothers and sisters, and do a research talk on my SUNY-IBM project. As a special bonus, my PhD advisee, Andrew Gill, presented a poster on his dissertation work on automation bias and pre-trial sentencing.
https://www.buffalo.edu/research/landing-pages/suny-ai-symposium.html

Has a chance to present a new paper – “Vicarious Distrust” with my brilliant co-author, Alexis Morin-Martel from McGill at the GROUPE DE RECHERCHE INTERUNIVERSITAIRE SUR LA NORMATIVITÉ on June 10. Also a great opportunity to re-up on Montréal bagels.

It was an honor and a pleasure to present work at the CSUF Symposium, “DECEPTION AND DISTRUST: THE DARK SIDE OF DISCOURSE”. My student commentator, Nikolas Canellos, was superb! https://philosophy.fullerton.edu/symposium/

Great brainstorming with awesome UCI philosophers Jeff Helmreich, Aaron James, and Anna Pederneschi at this Brown Bag.
https://www.humanities.uci.edu/events/brown-bag-jason-dcruz-suny-albany

Great to join this amazing line up of speakers at WashU April 24-25

https://philosophy.wustl.edu/past-events/new-directions-philosophy-artificial-intelligence

Annette Zimmerman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Shamik Dasgupta (University of California, Berkeley)

Jason D’Cruz (University at Albany): “Sorry/Not Sorry: The Puzzling Case of Chatbot Apologies”

Karen Frost-Arnold (Hobart and William Smith Colleges): “Pay Attention to This!  Epistemic Responsibility and Social Media Algorithms”

Atoosa Kasirzadeh (Carnegie Mellon University)

David Kinney (Washington University in St. Louis): “LLM-Generated Semantic Networks Predict Semantic Priming Effects on Human Reaction Times in a Word-Recognition Task”

Chad Lee-Stronach (Northeastern University)

Eric Wiland (University of Missouri-St. Louis): “Withholding Advice”

It was a pleasure keynoting this year’s ENY/ACRL conference at University at Albany. Librarians will play an essential role in defending and fortifying the information environment in the age of AI, and it was a honor to talk with them about accountability for disinformation.
https://sites.google.com/binghamton.edu/2025enyacrlconference/welcome

On Feb 8 at 2pm I’ll be presenting at SUNY’s “Public Good U” conference on the panel, “AI-Driven Solutions for Global Challenges”. Here’s the blurb:

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly reshaping society while simultaneously being shaped by it. This co-evolution raises important and complex questions across a wide range of academic disciplines, from engineering and computer science to health sciences and the humanities. This panel examines these complexities, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and exploring how the SUNY and CUNY systems, as a robust network of public universities, are uniquely positioned to address these challenges collectively.

My paper, Runaway Pretense, is now published with Analysis. Here’s the abstract and a link:
Deceptive displays of emotion can be used to manipulate another person’s beliefs, desires and emotions. This is an important but often neglected function of imaginative pretence. Pretending to be angry or aggrieved is a powerful strategy to gain emotional leverage. But subjects who deploy such tactics expose themselves to the peculiar hazard of losing track of the fact they are pretending. Such manipulators risk losing grip on their all-things-considered emotional take in a way that undermines their own goals and harms relationships. 

I’m very grateful to be among 14 SUNY faculty members whose research will be supported by a major grant from the SUNY-IBM AI Research Alliance. I’ve got an amazing team of philosophers, computer scientists, and psychologists to work with, and I’m so excited to get cracking!

Podcast with Aviva Bower on AI and teaching.
Is it ok to use ChatGPT to write your first draft? Are LLMs making us dumber? Listen to find out!

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pauseforteaching