The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues in Edmonton this week for AIIDE! I'll be trying my hand at live tweeting the paper sessions at both the main conference and EXAG/INT, which I'll try to keep in this big reply thread (starting off tomorrow). @aiide.bsky.social @exag.bsky.social

I'm pleased to announce that Shadab Choudhury & Asha Kumar's paper "Evaluating Human-LLM Representation Alignment: A Case Study on Affective Sentence Generation for Augmentative and Alternative Communication" has been accepted to IJCNLP-AACL Findings 2025! arxiv.org/abs/2503.11881 #AACL2025 #IJCNLP

There is one week left to apply to join us at Rutgers! We're hiring an Assistant Professor in Computational Sociology as part of a cluster of new hires in data science and AI. Applications are due next Wednesday, 10/15.

Thrilled to announce that my lab has had two papers accepted to the Wordplay Workshop at EMNLP 2025!!

Congratulations to the winners of the Commonsense Personal Grounded Dialogue Challenge! discourse.aicrowd.com/t/winners-ca... we look forward to hearing about the details of your systems at the EMNLP 2025 Wordplay Workshop!

Hidden Door is an AI storytelling game that actually makes sense

Submission deadline has been extended to September 12th! Everyone tell your friends! Submit your paper to this awesome workshop! wordplay-workshop.github.io

The CFP for the Wordplay Workshop at #EMNLP2025 is out! We welcome any work that sits at the intersection of #NLP and games/narrative. We are looking for regular papers (4-8 pgs) and extended abstracts about open challenges in the space (2 pgs) Papers due: August 29 wordplay-workshop.github.io/cfp/

US President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 calls for unprecedented cuts to scientific agencies that, if enacted, would deal a devastating blow to US science, policy specialists say. https://go.nature.com/4jYv3IP

every definition and description of "AI Slop" reads to me as what for-profit, highly metricized, and algorithmic platforms have always done. making it primarily an "AI" issue lets the platforms and this general logic too much off the hook imo

What data is he pulling this from? because back when people were using Facebook, people would have 100+ "friends" on average. 😂

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm. Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

A key difference here is that while either can be incorrect, the structure of Wikipedia *creates context* and the structure of LLMs *destroys context* Wikipedia has linked sources and an edit history showing where information came from and who added it when An LLM just generates text

ATTENTION: NSF GRANT RECIPIENTS We received a heads up from a trusted source that you should proactively download/print/screen shot any documentation on research.gov pertaining to your NSF awards, both those that are current and any that have closed in the last 5-6 years. 1/n

Northwestern just announced that the university will meet the funding needs of any research that is being impacted by stop orders. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO! #edusky #academicsky wgntv.com/evanston/nor...

My NSF CS for All grant was just terminated (www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...). Nationwide, we were: • Improving the quantity + quality of K-12 CS teachers • Ensuring the sustainability of K-12 CS teacher prep programs • Ensuring all youth in the U.S. have access to great CS teachers

Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale

I love how you can have an overview of the internet in 1995 by... looking in a book that lists 8,000+ websites with photos lol

I really love this idea that venture capitalists and tech companies are just doing reinforcement learning IRL: "With access to infinite resources, these adherents ran reinforcement learning on their companies. They threw billions of dollars' worth of spaghetti at the wall until something stuck."

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

The bipartisan belief that America would be a better place if *other people* worked in a factory. www.ft.com/content/8459...

I am *horrified* by Sam Altman's suggestion that ethical AI limits can be gathered through AI itself being used to scale out having conversations with hundreds of millions of human users of OpenAI products and it being a matter of majority consensus mediated through his machine. Ethics is a field!

'Bluesky has overtaken its flailing rival X in hosting posts related to new academic research, indicating the platform is fast becoming the go-to place for scholars to share their work.'

Reminder that for two more days @assistiveware.bsky.social is offering a 50% discount on your favorite AssistiveWare apps like the symbol/text-to-speech of Proloquo2Go. Sale ends April 9. www.assistiveware.com/aac-app-sale #AutismAcceptanceMonth

The resolution is on the desk of Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway as we speak. If you think he should move forward with it, drop him a note at president at rutgers dot edu to say so. Anyone with an interest should write! And that goes double for Rutgers alums + affiliates!!

It's almost as if the US values sports more than art...

Petabytes of critical government research that is marked for possible deletion cannot be archived because of technical and legal restrictions, meaning it is very likely to be lost forever: www.404media.co/nih-archives...

Almost universally the handful of factories that remain in the US that make clothes rely on immigrant labor which we're deporting. And making clothes is a *skill*. There's no shortcuts beyond hours behind a machine.

New Jersey is just stepping up left and right

If your NIH grant has been terminated, please report it here 👇 The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! forms.gle/81iLikdBtmCP...

This hasn't gotten much attention—but new National Science Foundation grants have dropped by almost half since Trump took office, an analysis by @davidimiller.bsky.social shows. www.science.org/content/arti... (Story by @policyhound.bsky.social)

Happy Trans Day of Visibility to all the lovely trans women, trans men, and everyone else within and without the gender spectrum. ♥️ #tdov

This is going to be the vibe coding version of the Chernobyl disaster, a wholly preventable failure caused by a combination of hubris, incompetence and design flaws.

The Elden Ring difficulty discourse betrays disabled gamers in important ways

I research the potential of using GenAI (like LLMs) in assistive technologies (AT) like AAC. Most uses of GenAI in AT are poorly thought out and mostly made to get people's money. The thing about making ATs is that they require adaptability to the specific person, and LLMs aren't good at that. 1/

Genetic testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means the future of the company’s vast trove of customer data is unknown. What does that mean for your data? My story with @lhn.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/how-to...

There is a quasi-religion in Silicon Valley that views AI as godlike. This faith has always been parallel to Evangelical Christianity: salvation (transhumanism), the rapture (the technological singularity), and demons (Roko's Basilisk) Lately the AI faith has fully fused with Christian Nationalism.

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

The HHS rule banning trans care from many ACA plans is open for public comment now. Only 3 comments so far. Embarrassing how the media is completely ignoring this. There's likely over 200,000 trans people on ACA plans (1% of 24 million) www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Meta used at least 16 of my books, and numerous articles, to help train the AI it will use to make billions. Authors, search your name here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

A key step in fighting the Trump admin's attacks on higher education specifically and democracy more broadly is to say as clearly as we can that we share values that are meaningful and that we will not stand by while our institutions are destroyed. You can do that here: bit.ly/DemocracyAndHigherEd

It was really fun working on this! Doing human participant studies isn't as scary as you'd think. If you're into personalizing LLM outputs or Human-AI collaboration, feel free to check out the paper!

The LARA Lab has a new paper out looking at the alignment (or lack there of) of #LLMs like #GPT and #LLaMA with human perceptions of emotions. Turns out the representation of the emotion matters! Shout out to @namer.bsky.social and Asha Kumar for their amazing work! arxiv.org/abs/2503.11881

Yes! I view writing grants as a form of activism now. Keep writing!!

This is a very basic and absolutely essential point that virtually nobody, even within the university, ever raises. We’re on the brink of a massive loss of disciplinary skills and knowledge — a loss that we are, by and large, choosing, without even discussing it as anything more than a market shift.

No they do not, New York Times! This is like writing that Santa Claus has IBS.

We are very pleased to announce that AIIDE'25 will be back at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from November 10-14! Paper deadline June 21 AOE. Join us with your work at the intersection of AI and Digital Entertainment! sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/...