#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/9/24

It was another good day for outdoor activities combined with listening to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent talk by Kayte Spector-Bagdady on respecting autonomy and enabling diversity in data-driven medical research at the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities. This a great takedown of how the medical community has treated private datasets with an ethically cavalier attitude, using interviews with stakeholders across the research pipeline. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6SVUlSfWCI

Next was a fantastic talk by Jacob Steinhardt on understanding and steering generative AI systems at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. After a brief run-through of how transformers work, Steinhardt shows how to use attention heads to understand system outputs. For example - how do you make a model think a stop sign is a yield sign? Put a bank behind it (bank products give yields)! Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh7tff8roKw

Last was the National Bureau of Economic Research Labor Studies symposium. This event is an embarrassment of riches, with incredible talks by Ellora Derenoncourt (the historical incarceration penalty in the US), Aidan Toner-Rodgers (AI, scientific discovery, and product innovation), and Heather Sarsons (measuring gender attitudes toward men and women). Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ0seXO-tl8