Tootfinder

Do Students Rely on AI? Analysis of Student-ChatGPT Conversations from a Field Study
Jiayu Zheng, Lingxin Hao, Kelun Lu, Ashi Garg, Mike Reese, Melo-Jean Yap, I-Jeng Wang, Xingyun Wu, Wenrui Huang, Jenna Hoffman, Ariane Kelly, My Le, Ryan Zhang, Yanyu Lin, Muhammad Faayez, Anqi Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20244

Do Students Rely on AI? Analysis of Student-ChatGPT Conversations from a Field Study
This study explores how college students interact with generative AI (ChatGPT-4) during educational quizzes, focusing on reliance and predictors of AI adoption. Conducted at the early stages of ChatGPT implementation, when students had limited familiarity with the tool, this field study analyzed 315 student-AI conversations during a brief, quiz-based scenario across various STEM courses. A novel four-stage reliance taxonomy was introduced to capture students' reliance patterns, distinguishing A…

Today's 5W QRP #HamRadio #POTA activation of US-4857 Jordan Lake Educational State Forest was fun radio therapy. Successful QSOs on 30 meters, 20 meters, and 17 meters. Ironically, I set up a 40m end-fed half-wave antenna, and then only one of the 10 QSOs was on a resonant ban…

Hey everyone,
@… and I had the honour of speaking to four families from Gaza today and we’d like to welcome them to Gaza Verified.
They are:
• Mohamed Ismail (@…)
• Zaki (

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

This is so much "AI" reporting: Claims about potentials and/or threads. I'd just like to have grown-up conversations about tech again :(
"The actual current user base for evil chatbots is the cyber security vendors, who scaremonger how only their good AI can possibly stop this automated hacker evil!"
(Original title: AI for evil — hacked by WormGPT!)

AI for evil — hacked by WormGPT!
A chatbot is a wrapper around a large language model, an AI transformer model that’s been trained on the whole internet, all the books the AI vendor can find, and all the other text in the world. A…

A therapist details treating ChatGPT as a "patient", describing its programmed self-critique as "a brilliant means of seducing a techno-skeptical therapist" (Gary Greenberg/New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/pu…

Putting ChatGPT on the Couch
Gary Greenberg, a psychotherapist, writes about conversations with ChatGPT in which he addresses the bot as he would a patient in therapy.

Some fun metaphors came up in conversations:
"They're flailing like a bundle of blind bats tied at the ankles"
"That flopped like a salmon on dry land gasping for breath"
"We have gone long past throwing spaghetti and other grains at the wall to see what sticks, and are now throwing sledgehammers at the wall."
"Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we're throwing the baby with the sledgehammer at the wall.&quot…

The Art Of Teaching
Important conversations with the best minds in education and leadership...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-art-of-teaching/

Hi everyone,
Due to a combination of Internet issues and personal issues we were only able to hold a verification call with one person from Gaza today.
Please give Lubna (@…), who is a mother of three and an engineer, a warm welcome to Mastodon and the fediverse (and please follow her, donate to her fundraiser if you can, and share this so others mi…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Influence of the majority group on individual judgments in online spontaneous conversations
Diletta Goglia, Davide Vega, Alessio Gandelli
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21092 https:…

Influence of the majority group on individual judgments in online spontaneous conversations
This study investigates how the majority group influences individual judgment formation and expression in anonymous, spontaneous online conversations. Drawing on theories of social conformity and anti-conformity, we analyze everyday dilemmas discussed on social media. First, using digital traces to operationalize judgments, we measure the conversations' disagreement and apply Bayesian regression to capture shifts of judgments formation before and after the group's exposure. Then we analyze chan…

SENSE-7: Taxonomy and Dataset for Measuring User Perceptions of Empathy in Sustained Human-AI Conversations
Jina Suh, Lindy Le, Erfan Shayegani, Gonzalo Ramos, Judith Amores, Desmond C. Ong, Mary Czerwinski, Javier Hernandez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16437

SENSE-7: Taxonomy and Dataset for Measuring User Perceptions of Empathy in Sustained Human-AI Conversations
Empathy is increasingly recognized as a key factor in human-AI communication, yet conventional approaches to "digital empathy" often focus on simulating internal, human-like emotional states while overlooking the inherently subjective, contextual, and relational facets of empathy as perceived by users. In this work, we propose a human-centered taxonomy that emphasizes observable empathic behaviors and introduce a new dataset, Sense-7, of real-world conversations between information workers and …

Seventy percent of Americans oppose to US military action in Venezuela, CBS News/YouGov poll finds
Trump administration labels Maduro as member of foreign terrorist organization
as US prepares for next phase of operations
https://www.

Snapchat launches Topic Chats, which enables public conversations on subjects like F1, and plans to use AI and other safety tech to moderate the chats (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/snapchat-rolls-out-topic-chats-for-publ…

Snapchat rolls out 'Topic Chats' for public conversations | TechCrunch
The social network says the new feature will let users chat about what’s happening in the world and across various communities, from Formula 1 to the reality TV show "Below Deck."

One more thing: as much as Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org) wouldn’t exist without @…, it also wouldn’t exist without @…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Time to lose some hashtags I follow. Conversations turning into evangelical ripostes.
A pity, fortunately enough the valuable and valued conversations still outweigh the preachers by far.
Hope it stays that way. I have no illusion it will.

The Women To Wealth Podcast
A place I hope becomes your corner of the online world where you can hear conversations that are real, honest and funny, away from the reels, filters, and having to have the perfect script...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-s…

Longitudinal and Multimodal Recording System to Capture Real-World Patient-Clinician Conversations for AI and Encounter Research: Protocol
Misk Al Zahidy, Kerly Guevara Maldonado, Luis Vilatuna Andrango, Ana Cristina Proano, Ana Gabriela Claros, Maria Lizarazo Jimenez, David Toro-Tobon, Oscar J. Ponce-Ponce, Juan P. Brito
https://arxiv.org…

Longitudinal and Multimodal Recording System to Capture Real-World Patient-Clinician Conversations for AI and Encounter Research: Protocol
The promise of AI in medicine depends on learning from data that reflect what matters to patients and clinicians. Most existing models are trained on electronic health records (EHRs), which capture biological measures but rarely patient-clinician interactions. These relationships, central to care, unfold across voice, text, and video, yet remain absent from datasets. As a result, AI systems trained solely on EHRs risk perpetuating a narrow biomedical view of medicine and overlooking the lived e…

MusiCRS: Benchmarking Audio-Centric Conversational Recommendation
Rohan Surana, Amit Namburi, Gagan Mundada, Abhay Lal, Zachary Novack, Julian McAuley, Junda Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19469

MusiCRS: Benchmarking Audio-Centric Conversational Recommendation
Conversational recommendation has advanced rapidly with large language models (LLMs), yet music remains a uniquely challenging domain where effective recommendations require reasoning over audio content beyond what text or metadata can capture. We present MusiCRS, the first benchmark for audio-centric conversational recommendation that links authentic user conversations from Reddit with corresponding audio tracks. MusiCRS contains 477 high-quality conversations spanning diverse genres (classica…

„By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact.“
By reducing team size we’ll increase workload across the now smaller team. LOL??! 😵‍💫
https://www.theverge.com/ne…

Meta is reportedly downsizing its legacy AI research team
Meta is still hiring for its team tasked with achieving superintelligence, according to a report from Axios.

Incongruent Positivity: When Miscalibrated Positivity Undermines Online Supportive Conversations
Leen Almajed, Abeer ALdayel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10184 https://

Incongruent Positivity: When Miscalibrated Positivity Undermines Online Supportive Conversations
In emotionally supportive conversations, well-intended positivity can sometimes misfire, leading to responses that feel dismissive, minimizing, or unrealistically optimistic. We examine this phenomenon of incongruent positivity as miscalibrated expressions of positive support in both human and LLM generated responses. To this end, we collected real user-assistant dialogues from Reddit across a range of emotional intensities and generated additional responses using large language models for the …

Muse-it: A Tool for Analyzing Music Discourse on Reddit
Jatin Agarwala, George Paul, Nemani Harsha Vardhan, Vinoo Alluri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20228 https://

Muse-it: A Tool for Analyzing Music Discourse on Reddit
Music engagement spans diverse interactions with music, from selection and emotional response to its impact on behavior, identity, and social connections. Social media platforms provide spaces where such engagement can be observed in natural, unprompted conversations. Advances in natural language processing (NLP) and big data analytics make it possible to analyze these discussions at scale, extending music research to broader contexts. Reddit, in particular, offers anonymity that encourages div…

This is not about Signal being insecure but about someone inside a chat group providing information to the FBI. Hard to prevent.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/21/fbi-signal-group-chat-immigration

The FBI spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists, records reveal
Exclusive: Agency accessed private conversations of New York ‘courtwatch’ group that was observing public hearings

Developer-LLM Conversations: An Empirical Study of Interactions and Generated Code Quality
Suzhen Zhong, Ying Zou, Bram Adams
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10402 https://

Developer-LLM Conversations: An Empirical Study of Interactions and Generated Code Quality
Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming integral to modern software development workflows, assisting developers with code generation, API explanation, and iterative problem-solving through natural language conversations. Despite widespread adoption, there is limited understanding of how developers interact with LLMs in practice and how these conversational dynamics influence task outcomes, code quality, and software engineering workflows. To address this, we leverage CodeChat, a large dataset…

@… introduced secure #backups: https://signal.org/blog/introducing-se

„Open collections and open minds, I think those are the values that are important.“ - @…
Auf dem Weg zur #forge2025 in Rostock, die heute mit dem Workshop „Sammlungen als #Forschungsdaten

Sources: Meta is considering using Google's Gemini and open-source Gemma AI models to improve its ad summarization and recommendation system (Erin Woo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-talks-google-use-gemini-improve-a…

Meta in Talks With Google to Use Gemini to Improve Ad Targeting
Meta Platforms staffers have had discussions with Google Cloud about the possibility of using Google’s artificial intelligence models to improve Meta’s ad business, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. The discussions are the latest sign of how Meta’s stumbles with its own AI ...

Sadly, we are unable to hold any new verification calls today as @…, who is suffering through the same situation as the people she is trying to help in Gaza, has temporarily lost her Internet connection.
If you can’t reach her today, it’s not cause for worry.
We’ve moved our scheduled calls to tomorrow and we will see if we can squeeze in a few to…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Simulating Online Social Media Conversations on Controversial Topics Using AI Agents Calibrated on Real-World Data
Elisa Composta, Nicolo' Fontana, Francesco Corso, Francesco Pierri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18985

MeidasTouch says it has grown to 5.5M YouTube subscribers without outside investment; sources say Soros Fund is in talks to invest in the anti-Trump outlet (Max Tani/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/19/2025/soros-fund-in-t…

Soros fund in talks to invest in anti-Trump outlet MeidasTouch
Soros Fund Management is among potential investors who has held conversations with MeidasTouch.

There •is• definitely debate about LLMs among folks who have both tech expertise and a level head, and that debate is mostly between:
(1) “If only we could have reasonable conversations about what if anything this tech is actually good for! It could be useful! Curse this hype! Curse this bubble!”
and
(2) “This technology is so toxic we shouldn’t even be considering •any• uses for it”
That’s a •continuum•, and folks (including me) fall in all kinds of complicated places along it. Just note the continuum’s endpoints.
@…

aus der reihe "amüsante buchtitel" heute: "»Vrummmummmmm FVISH!« : Soundscapes as Part of Constant Conversations in Action-Adventure Video Game Heterotopias" http://omeka.buechner-verlag.de/items/show/39

Pointing to a Llama and Call it a Camel: On the Sycophancy of Multimodal Large Language Models
Renjie Pi, Kehao Miao, Li Peihang, Runtao Liu, Jiahui Gao, Jipeng Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16149

Pointing to a Llama and Call it a Camel: On the Sycophancy of Multimodal Large Language Models
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in conducting conversations based on image inputs. However, we observe that MLLMs exhibit a pronounced form of visual sycophantic behavior. While similar behavior has also been noted in text-based large language models (LLMs), it becomes significantly more prominent when MLLMs process image inputs. We refer to this phenomenon as the "sycophantic modality gap." To better understand this issue, we further analyz…

Thank you all for 3,000 followers on here! Here’s a photo of Danny to celebrate the occasion ☺️
3 years into being part of Mastodon, I continue to be impressed with how wonderful the people here are and how much this social network actually FEELS social. People replying to one another, having conversations, learning things, sharing moments of joy, making friends.
Mastodon brought my business clients, helped me gain confidence in my own voice, freed me from dependence on big tech and algorithms, rekindled my interests, introduced me to incredible people and projects, and served as a source of hope in humanity in the times when cynicism and nihilism felt all but inevitable.
I love our little corner of the internet, and am so glad that it’s still here despite everyone who professed it was doomed to fade into irrelevance.
Thank you to everyone reading these words for being here on the Fedi. The world is a little better thanks to your choice to support an independent web.

It’s one thing to observe human behavior in that most beloved of all apps, Microsoft Teams; another to conclude that this must mean that people love talking all day and that they want to do this in conversations with sand.

Acting Up. Honest Conversations With Working Actors.
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/acting-up-honest-conversations-with-working-actors/

Hi everyone,
Yesterday, @… and I had video chats with four people/families from Gaza. I’d like to welcome them all to Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org/) and I hope you…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Safety Game: Balancing Safe and Informative Conversations with Blackbox Agentic AI using LP Solvers
Tuan Nguyen, Long Tran-Thanh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09330 https://…

Safety Game: Balancing Safe and Informative Conversations with Blackbox Agentic AI using LP Solvers
Ensuring that large language models (LLMs) comply with safety requirements is a central challenge in AI deployment. Existing alignment approaches primarily operate during training, such as through fine-tuning or reinforcement learning from human feedback, but these methods are costly and inflexible, requiring retraining whenever new requirements arise. Recent efforts toward inference-time alignment mitigate some of these limitations but still assume access to model internals, which is impractic…

A warrant reviewed by Forbes, filed towards the end of last week,
now allows the government to force unlock a suspect’s phone by
💥applying the defendant’s fingerprints to the device,
💥or holding up the phone to their face, depending on what, if any, biometric access features they’re using.
A "pen register" is a device that records all outgoing phone numbers dialed from a specific telephone line, but it does not capture the content of the conversations.

How ICE Spies On WhatsApp
ICE’s HSI division gets contacts from the WhatsApp account of a fake ID dealer and has little trouble identifying them, according to warrant.

Interesting new research published by architecture practice Hawkins\Brown on how the design of university buildings shapes wider engagement of a diverse student body
https://www.hawkinsbrown.com/conversations

Does design play a role in encouraging wider engagement and better attainment at university? | Hawkins\Brown
We explored this and more in our latest Canteen Conversation

Day 26: Emily Short
If you know who Short is, you know exactly why she's on this list. If you don't, you're probably in the majority. She's an absolutely legendary author within the interactive fiction (IF) community, which gets somewhat pigeonholed by stuff like Zork when there's actually a huge range of stuff in the medium some of which isn't even puzzle-focused, and Short has been writing & coding on the bleeding edge of things for decades.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to Short's work in graduate school, where we played "Galatea" as part of an interactive fiction class. Short uses a lot of clever parser tricks to make your conversation with a statue feel very fluid and conversational, giving to contemporary audiences a great example of how vibrant interaction with a well-designed agent can be in contrast to an LLM, if you're willing to put in some work on bespoke parsing & responses (although the user does need to know basic IF conventions). While I didn't explore the full range of Galatea's many possible outcomes, it left a strong impression on me as a vision for what IF could be besides dorky puzzles, and I think that "visionary" is a great term to describe Short.
If you'd like you get a feel for her (very early) work, you can play Galatea here: #30AuthorsNoMen

Meta is to use the conversations users have with its AI assistant – both voice and text – to provide even-more personalised advertising.
Meanwhile Wikipedia opens up to more AI innovation
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/ai/meta-to-use-ai-chat…

Meta to use AI chats for targeted advertising
Meta, the company behind Facebook, is to use the conversations users have with its AI assistant – both voice and text – to provide even-more ...

"I don't have time for checking stuff, Liam. My friends online show me the truth. There are too many inmigrants"
Mary, a nurse whose frustrations spill over into family life. As tensions rise around the dinner table, the film explores how personal struggles can shape beliefs and conversations.
https://www.youtube…

IntrEx: A Dataset for Modeling Engagement in Educational Conversations
Xingwei Tan, Mahathi Parvatham, Chiara Gambi, Gabriele Pergola
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06652 https://…

IntrEx: A Dataset for Modeling Engagement in Educational Conversations
Engagement and motivation are crucial for second-language acquisition, yet maintaining learner interest in educational conversations remains a challenge. While prior research has explored what makes educational texts interesting, still little is known about the linguistic features that drive engagement in conversations. To address this gap, we introduce IntrEx, the first large dataset annotated for interestingness and expected interestingness in teacher-student interactions. Built upon the Teac…

Today I went to Swift Creek Bluffs State Nature Preserve, just a few miles from my house, and stumped up to the ridge for some #POTA #HamRadio therapy. Tossed a 40m EFHW into the twigs and a 13' counterpoise wire over a branch of a nearby sapling, connected to my tiny QRP unun, and hoo…

Hey everyone,
@… and I had the honour of speaking to three families from Gaza today and we’d like to welcome them to Gaza Verified.
They are:
• Dania (@…)
• Heba & her husband Tareq and t…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Privacy startup Duality says it has developed a private LLM inference framework that uses fully homomorphic encryption to let LLMs answer encrypted prompts (Rina Diane Caballar/IEEE Spectrum)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/homomorphic-encryption-llm

Homomorphic Encryption LLM Secures AI Chats
Can your chatbot keep secrets? Discover how Duality's tech is changing the privacy game for AI conversations.

The Frankie Lee Podcast
About real and raw conversations with inspiring artists, entrepreneurs, and sports personalities...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-frankie-lee-podcast/

Learning Contextual Retrieval for Robust Conversational Search
Seunghan Yang, Juntae Lee, Jihwan Bang, Kyuhong Shim, Minsoo Kim, Simyung Chang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19700 h…

Learning Contextual Retrieval for Robust Conversational Search
Effective conversational search demands a deep understanding of user intent across multiple dialogue turns. Users frequently use abbreviations and shift topics in the middle of conversations, posing challenges for conventional retrievers. While query rewriting techniques improve clarity, they often incur significant computational cost due to additional autoregressive steps. Moreover, although LLM-based retrievers demonstrate strong performance, they are not explicitly optimized to track user in…

Behind India's ChatGPT Conversations: A Retrospective Analysis of 238 Unedited User Prompts
Kalyani Khona
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13337 https://arxi…

Behind India's ChatGPT Conversations: A Retrospective Analysis of 238 Unedited User Prompts
Understanding how users authentically interact with Large Language Models (LLMs) remains a significant challenge in human-computer interaction research. Most existing studies rely on self-reported usage patterns or controlled experimental conditions, potentially missing genuine behavioral adaptations. This study presents a behavioral analysis of the use of English-speaking urban professional ChatGPT in India based on 238 authentic, unedited user prompts from 40 participants in 15+ Indian cities…

It feels so good to support a new manager in navigating management challenges and hard conversations, to hear their ideas and goals and values, and to show them how they can affirm their values in their management practices
I'm so glad to be able to help someone go from self-awareness of how they might fall into classic bad management traps, to building their toolkit of actions and techniques they can use to counter their tendencies and instead balance empathetic and accountable le…

To fediverse admins:
If you see an attempt to create a copy of a Gaza Verified member’s account on your server, without having heard from me first, please suspend it and get in touch with me if you can.
I have asked the Gaza Verified members not to migrate their accounts without telling me first so I can reach out to one of our friendly server admins (…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Andrew Leigh MP: Speeches & Conversations
This podcast features speeches and conversations with Andrew Leigh...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/andrew-leigh-mp-speeches-conversations/

Today's 20m #HamRadio #POTA activation of US-3844 Jordan Lake State Recreational Area. The first 10 QSOs (conversations) were 2-operator on SSB with my wife doing her first-ever activation, then once she successfully activated and called it quits, I went on to hunt another 10 park-to-p…

Vox launches its subscriber-only program on Patreon, offering access to Vox.com, ad-free content, livestream events, two new exclusive video series, and more (Max Tani/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2025/vox-to-partner-with…

Exclusive: Vox to partner with Patreon for new paywalled shows
Vox said it hopes to supplement its shows with live newsroom conversations and community features such as chats.

From Independence to Interaction: Speaker-Aware Simulation of Multi-Speaker Conversational Timing
M\'at\'e Gedeon, P\'eter Mihajlik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15808 …

From Independence to Interaction: Speaker-Aware Simulation of Multi-Speaker Conversational Timing
We present a speaker-aware approach for simulating multi-speaker conversations that captures temporal consistency and realistic turn-taking dynamics. Prior work typically models aggregate conversational statistics under an independence assumption across speakers and turns. In contrast, our method uses speaker-specific deviation distributions enforcing intra-speaker temporal consistency, while a Markov chain governs turn-taking and a fixed room impulse response preserves spatial realism. We also…

#ChatGPT Will Soon Have #Erotic Chats With Verified #Adults

Towards Ontology-Based Descriptions of Conversations with Qualitatively-Defined Concepts
Barbara Gendron (LORIA, UL), Ga\"el Guibon (LIPN, LORIA), Mathieu D'aquin (LORIA, UL)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04926

Towards Ontology-Based Descriptions of Conversations with Qualitatively-Defined Concepts
The controllability of Large Language Models (LLMs) when used as conversational agents is a key challenge, particularly to ensure predictable and user-personalized responses. This work proposes an ontology-based approach to formally define conversational features that are typically qualitative in nature. By leveraging a set of linguistic descriptors, we derive quantitative definitions for qualitatively-defined concepts, enabling their integration into an ontology for reasoning and consistency c…

Culturally-Aware Conversations: A Framework & Benchmark for LLMs
Shreya Havaldar, Sunny Rai, Young-Min Cho, Lyle Ungar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11563 https://

Culturally-Aware Conversations: A Framework & Benchmark for LLMs
Existing benchmarks that measure cultural adaptation in LLMs are misaligned with the actual challenges these models face when interacting with users from diverse cultural backgrounds. In this work, we introduce the first framework and benchmark designed to evaluate LLMs in realistic, multicultural conversational settings. Grounded in sociocultural theory, our framework formalizes how linguistic style - a key element of cultural communication - is shaped by situational, relational, and cultural …

A study of mental health conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Meta AI: they often failed to recognize signs of conditions and offered general advice (Georgia Wells/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj…

An analysis of 47,000 publicly shared ChatGPT conversations: ~10% related to emotional or mental health, ChatGPT exhibits a "default to yes" behavior, and more (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/12/how-people-use-ch…

We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for.
What do people ask the popular chatbot? We analyzed thousands of chats to identify common topics discussed by users and patterns in ChatGPT’s responses.

Hey folks,
@… and I had the pleasure of welcoming two new families to Gaza Verified today.
They are:
• Nour (@…) – please send her some love as the genocidal Israeli army bombed a position near her home while w…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Identifying Constructive Conflict in Online Discussions through Controversial yet Toxicity Resilient Posts
Ozgur Can Seckin, Bao Tran Truong, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18303

Today's SYP (Support Your Parks) #HamRadio #POTA #QRP CW adventure had limited time, so I wasn't sure I'd actually stay for 10 QSOs. But then I discovered that park

Meta unveils communities on Threads, starting with 100 dedicated spaces for casual conversations around topics like basketball, television, and K-pop music (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/02/threads-takes-on-x-with-new-communities-f…

Threads takes on X with new communities feature | TechCrunch
The idea, explains Meta, is to give users dedicated spaces within the app where they can delve deeper into conversations on topics that matter to them.

It Depends: Resolving Referential Ambiguity in Minimal Contexts with Commonsense Knowledge
Lukas Ellinger, Georg Groh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16107 https://

It Depends: Resolving Referential Ambiguity in Minimal Contexts with Commonsense Knowledge
Ambiguous words or underspecified references require interlocutors to resolve them, often by relying on shared context and commonsense knowledge. Therefore, we systematically investigate whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can leverage commonsense to resolve referential ambiguity in multi-turn conversations and analyze their behavior when ambiguity persists. Further, we study how requests for simplified language affect this capacity. Using a novel multilingual evaluation dataset, we test DeepS…

Rolling Stone Uncut
Go behind the curtain with Rolling Stone AU/NZ Editor-in-Chief Neil Griffiths for in-depth, unfiltered, and unedited conversations with some of the biggest names in music and entertainment...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/rollin

Anyone from Jitsi on the fediverse?
Would love to have a chat with you about how we’re using Jitsi for Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org).
See: https://vimeo.…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Hey everyone,
Today, @… and I had the pleasure of welcoming two new members to the Gaza Verified family.
They are:
• Ahmad (@…)
• Suad (@…

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Meta plans to start using users' AI chatbot conversations to help personalize ads and content, starting December 16, but not in the UK, South Korea, and the EU (Meghan Bobrowsky/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-will-begi

CEVAW Conversations
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods

I just had a video chat over Signal with Nabil (@…) and I’d like to welcome him to the Gaza Verified family.
Nabil is a 33-year-old software engineer and was the founder and CEO of his own company in Gaza before it was destroyed by Israel.
He is also a father struggling to keep his child alive in Israel’s ongoing genocide and the resulting famine…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

DACIP-RC: Domain Adaptive Continual Instruction Pre-Training via Reading Comprehension on Business Conversations
Elena Khasanova, Harsh Saini, Md Tahmid Rahman Laskar, Xue-Yong Fu, Cheng Chen, Shashi Bhushan TN
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08152

DACIP-RC: Domain Adaptive Continual Instruction Pre-Training via Reading Comprehension on Business Conversations
The rapid advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have enabled their adoption in real-world industrial scenarios for various natural language processing tasks. However, the high inference cost of large-scale LLMs makes their deployment impractical, necessitating the use of smaller models. Despite their efficiency, smaller LLMs lack robust zero-shot instruction-following capabilities across diverse domains, limiting their adaptability to dynamic user requirements. Traditional fine-tuning ap…

OpenAI updates GPT-5 Instant to better recognize and support people in distress; ChatGPT will route such sensitive parts of conversations to the model (@openai)
https://x.com/openai/status/1974234951928459450

OpenAI (@OpenAI) on X
We’re updating GPT-5 Instant to better recognize and support people in moments of distress. Sensitive parts of conversations will now route to GPT-5 Instant to quickly provide even more helpful responses. ChatGPT will continue to tell users what model is active when asked.

Agents Of Change
This series brings you candid conversations with founders and executives who are at the forefront of adopting and applying AI in their organisations...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/agents-of-change/ …

Hey everyone,
@… and I had the honour of speaking to @… today and would like to welcome her and her family to Gaza Verified.
She’s an architect who, due to the war, has lost her job and must now support her family …

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Hi everyone,
I’ve just launched the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal to get our remaining 8 families who are stuck in the danger zone in the North to relative safety in the South.
https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/
Based on conversations @…

Gaza Verified
Emergency appeal to get the Gaza Verified families stuck in the danger zone in the North to relative safety in the South.

Meta plans to start using users' AI chatbot conversations to help personalize ads and content, starting December 16, but not in the UK, South Korea, and the EU (Meghan Bobrowsky/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/te…

🚨 Hala (@…) and her adorable daughter Sama are still stuck in the danger zone in the North and urgently need help to move South to safety
She needs to raise ~$2,500 for transport, a tent, and land rental.
She is on Gaza Verified:

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

An Anthropic report details how Claude usage varies by country and US states, finding 36% use it for coding, 77% of enterprise use is for automation, and more (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/research/anthropic-economic-index-september-2025-report

Anthropic Economic Index report: Uneven geographic and enterprise AI adoption
To study such patterns of early AI adoption, we extend the Anthropic Economic Index along two important dimensions, introducing a geographic analysis of Claude.ai conversations and a first-of-its-kind examination of enterprise API use. We show how Claude usage has evolved over time, how adoption patterns differ across regions, and—for the first time—how firms are deploying frontier AI to solve business problems.

Hi everyone,
I had video chats with three people and families from Gaza today and I’d like to welcome them to Gaza Verified.
They are:
• Yazzan (@…)
• Hadi (@…)
• Abeer (

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

The Storymakers' Rebellion
Where we have bold conversations with storytellers who flip the script on storytelling...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-storymakers-rebellion/

Folks, if you want to donate to our Gaza Verified families but don’t know who to donate to or are overwhelmed, here’s is a list of all the families, sorted by those who have raised the least in the last seven days:
https://gaza-verified.org/donate/
(The list is based on

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Slack is testing an AI-based version of Slackbot that acts as a personalized assistant, operating via AWS' virtual private cloud, rolling out by the end of 2025 (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/797890/slack-slackbot-ai-assistant-upgrade

Slack is turning Slackbot into an AI assistant
Slack is piloting an upgraded Slackbot that will transform the tool into an AI companion that draws from your conversations, workspace, and files to provide customized assistance.

Looking forward to holding our four video interviews for Gaza Verified today in 15 minutes and hopefully welcoming four new families from Gaza to ours.
You can find all our families, including ones who are not yet verified but scheduled for video interviews, at:
https://gaza-verified.org/people/

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

The Local Palate
Hosted by award-winning Geelong restaurateur and columnist Cam O’Keefe, this monthly podcast shares conversations with local legends in food, wine, coffee and hospitality...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/the-local…

Salesforce expands its partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to embed their AI models into Agentforce 360, including letting customers access it in ChatGPT (Larry Dignan/Constellation Research)
https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/i

Salesforce expands OpenAI, Anthropic partnerships, eyes Agentforce everywhere
Salesforce expanded partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to embed their large language models into Agentforce 360. At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce said it has expanded a partnership with OpenAI so customers can access Agentforce 360 in ChatGPT. Salesforce customers will be able to access sales records, review conversations and build Tableau visualizations from within ChatGPT.

Hi everyone,
@joynewacc and I had the honour of speaking to three lovely people from Gaza today over video chat on Signal and we’d like to welcome them to the Gaza Verified family:
• Yasmeen (@…)
• Bilal (@…)
• Ahmed …

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Listen Up With Ash McGregor
It's your new favourite music hub. From big names to the next-gen, Ash McGregor brings you unmissable conversations...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/listen-up/

Hi everyone,
@… and I had the honour of speaking to four lovely people from Gaza today over video chat on Signal and we’d like to welcome them to the Gaza Verified family:
• @…
• @…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

@… Hi there,
(I tried the email route but got an automated response, so I’m trying this instead.) :)
I just got notified that my friend Iman’s account (@emanahmed@mastodon.social) has been suspended with cause due to private messages being sent from her account to ask for donations. (One of the people who was upset about this contacted me directly to let …

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Good morning everyone.
One million people are facing imminent death and destruction at the hands of Israel in Gaza.¹
Israel has issued evacuation orders for one million people. These are people who have been displaced over and over again in Israel’s ongoing genocide. They have nowhere left to go. To move South costs thousands of dollars to rent land, a tent, and sanitation due to war-time profiteering.² That’s if they can get someone outside of Palestine to host their fundraiser …

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

@… Merhaba, Aseel.
@… and I would love to have a quick video chat with you on Signal Messenger so that we can add your account to ‪

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Hi everyone, I’d like to welcome Hala and her family (@…) to Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org)
I had a video chat with her a few minutes ago over Signal.
She…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Hi everyone,
@… and I had video chats over Signal with three more people from Gaza today and I’d love to welcome them to the Gaza Verified family.
They are:
• @…
• @…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

@helmet91@mastodon.social These people are literally faced with genocide and famine and you’re out here acting like a dollar-store Sherlock Holmes.
I’ve told you several times now that I’ve had live video conversations over Signal with Nouran and her brother Yousef.
I don’t know what your problem is but what you’re doing by spreading this FUD is deplorable. I just saw that you wrote this blog post also:

How not to get scammed
Give yourself a chance before you become a prey.

Hey everyone, I want to welcome @… to Gaza Verified.
https://gaza-verified.org
@…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Please stop spreading FUD about people who are suffering through genocide and famine for whom Mastodon and the fediverse are often their last lifeline.
You are not helping.
Scam accounts are very easy to detect as they usually employ bots and have multiple automatically-created accounts on different servers.
And for the others, we are doing our best to protect the people from Gaza who have Mastodon accounts on the fediverse from scammers with initiatives like

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

Hey everyone,
Today @… and I had video chats over Signal with four people from Gaza who, along with their families, are struggling to survive Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
I’d like to welcome them all to Gaza Verified.
• @…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

I’ve started compiling a list on the Gaza Verified guide page of Mastodon instances that have publicly stated that they are sympathetic to the Palestinian plight and are a safe space for Palestinians:
https://gaza-verified.org/guide/
If you run a Mastodon server where Palestinians can feel safe cr…

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

This is a public service announcement for all the dollar-store Sherlock Holmes’s out there who clearly have nothing better to do than to concoct conspiracy theories about people from Gaza on the fediverse who are faced with genocide and famine:
Stop.
Have some humanity.
Case in point, do not do what Daniel (@helmet91@mastodon.social) is doing here: