What are vision language models considering when attempting to answer a question from a chart image? I am pleased to announce that our recent work exploring this topic has been accepted to #IEEE #VIS. Check out the pre-print below and see you in Vienna: arxiv.org/abs/2504.05445

I told the students in my class that timelines used to chronological (e.g, not algorithmically curated) and they were surprised. Watching the internet evolve is now wisdoms I impart…

This was a fun paper to write and a fun collaboration.

Very cool!

If we’re writing really long documents that no one wants to write and also no one wants to read, then what is being accomplished with ChatGPT besides procedural performance?

🚨 New Pre-print: Probing the Visualization Literacy of Vision Language Models: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly arxiv.org/abs/2504.05445

We are seeking individuals to participate in a survey study to understand people's attitudes on collaborative data analysis and AI-assisted data analysis. The survey will take approximately 25 minutes: uwaterloo.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_.... #datascience #genAI #datawork #collaboration

An unexpected part of teaching a course on Human-AI interaction is that many students critique papers based upon techniques that could not exist at the time the paper was written. They are quite knowledgeable of the current methods, but, teaching them how we got here has been interesting.

I feel a few of the class discussions with my students this term are “in the before times of AI, here’s how X was done”

When I was working with the BC CDC I saw first hand (and for the first time) all the work that dedicated public servants do to keep many critical things running. Politicians are one thing, public servants are another. We can get by without the former but probably not without the latter.

Even though it’s an interesting result, I am somewhat disheartened that research is now “add wait to the prompt and things get better”. I remember when genomics was “turn on the sequencer, get genome, get nature paper”, and while novel, those early genomes had tons of errors in the rush to publish.

Science twitter was why I used twitter. I missed loosing it and I am glad it looks like it’s reforming in a new space.

This term I'll be teaching a graduate course on Human-AI Interaction. Check out the reading list and let me know if I am missing any of your favorites: docs.google.com/document/d/1... #HAI #Human-AI #HumanComputerInteraction

This is delightful