Since I can’t get it out of my head, I wrote up my thoughts on @kevinbaker.bsky.social's critique of AI-automated science and the logical end of processes that can't self-correct.

Thanks for participating and presenting your work!

Announcing the first workshop on Foundations of Language Model Reasoning (FoRLM) at NeurIPS 2025! 📝Soliciting abstracts that advance foundational understanding of reasoning in language models, from theoretical analyses to rigorous empirical studies. 📆 Deadline: Sept 3, 2025

Nice article about my mom’s new book shepherdexpress.com/culture/book...

“the only way to predict or to control the functioning of such systems is by an intricate system of charms, spells, and incantations”

See you there!

Looking forward to a great MMLS!

🧵 Heard all the buzz around distilling from OpenAI models? Check out @jifanz's latest work SIEVE - showing how strategic distillation can make LLM development radically more cost-effective while matching quality.

Task vectors are akin to punchcards: you feed them to your LLM and it implements specific tasks, without in-context demonstrations. Liu's new paper examines at what scale, where in the network and when during training do they emerge, and how to encourage their emergence. arxiv.org/pdf/2501.09240

feeling a but under the weather this week … thus an increased level of activity on social media and blog: kyunghyuncho.me/i-sensed-anx...

A happy author discovering the first hard copies

🚨Excited to share our new publication @jmcquarterly.bsky.social. In our experiment, we showed promising evidence of how to design intergroup framing in news coverage to reduce conspiracy beliefs in the context of Sino-U.S. relationship👇 #journalism #scicomm journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

If you are into ML theory (RL or not) with a proven track record, and you are interested in an industry research position, PM me. Feel free to spread the word.

I’ll be presenting a poster on some work on OOD detection using active learning today at 4:30pst!

Check out our poster about humor and LLMs at #2908 today in the noon poster session! I’ll have to miss it, but Rob and Lalit will both be there to chat.

We’ve extended the deadline for nominations to the Margot and Tom Pritzker Prize for AI in Science Research Excellence to January 5th, 2025! This prize celebrates exceptional contributions to AI and the natural sciences or engineering datascience.uchicago.edu/research/ai-...

Past work has characterized the functions learned by neural networks: arxiv.org/pdf/1910.01635, arxiv.org/abs/1902.05040, arxiv.org/abs/2109.12960, arxiv.org/abs/2105.03361. But it turns out multi-task training produces strikingly different solutions! Adding tasks produces “kernel-like” solutions.

There is a ton of interest in the question of whether AI can be be funny: www.bbc.com/future/artic.... Our paper at NeurIPS investigates the humor generation capabilities of the latest and greatest AI models using one of world’s largest humor datasets! arxiv.org/pdf/2406.10522

I’m recruiting multiple PhD students for Fall 2025 at UCR! If you’re interested in working on efficient ML, RL, and LLMs, please apply to the UCR CS/EE PhD program. Please visit yinglunz.com for detailed information on research directions and contact instructions.

Save the Date! It is our pleasure to share that the 2025 Midwest ML Symposium will be held at the University of Chicago, June 23-24, 2025! Please stay tuned for further information about registration, accommodation, and transportation on the conference website midwest-ml.org/2025/

🚨 The University of Wisconsin—Madison has a huge faculty hiring Initiative called RISE. We expect to hire an additional 120-150 new faculty over the next 3-5 years. Focus areas are AI, sustainability, and health. Learn more: rise.wisc.edu/about/ Jobs: jobs.wisc.edu/pages/wiscon...

For those who don’t feel like they fit into my Grumpy Machine Learners list (which I still need to update based on 100+ requests) I’ve created another starter pack: go.bsky.app/Js7ka12 (Self) nominations welcome.

Just put together a starter pack for Deep Learning Theory. Let me know if you'd like to be included or suggest someone to add to the list! go.bsky.app/2qnppia

In addition to the Deep Learning Theory starter pack, I've also put together a starter pack for Reinforcement Learning Theory. Let me know if you'd like to be included or suggest someone to add to the list! go.bsky.app/LWyGAAu

Sounds interesting. Will the focus be evaluating the performance of pre-trained models or evaluating the whole process (architecture, training, hyperparams, etc)?

Cool! I like the application to active learning.

As my first post on this platform, allow me to advertise the RL theory lecture notes I have been developing with Sasha Rakhlin: arxiv.org/abs/2312.16730 (shameless repost of my pinned tweet)