#AcademicRunPlaylist - 2/13/24

I can't believe they gave my kids a snow day, but at least it made WFH extra challenging! Also it gave me an excuse to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist to cool off!

First was an incredible conversation with Sanmi Koyejo on the illusion of LLM "emergent behaviors" on the TWIML podcast. Koyejo takes an absolute hammer to the poor statistical framing of these behaviors through a variety of experiments. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTTE8Dp1gNo

Next was an important talk by Shaolei Ren on designing environmentally responsible AI, explicitly integrating water usage and replenishment into optimization functions at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZiCHnGP2yY

Next was an interesting talk by Seongkook Heo on bringing physical objects into the digital world at the University of Maryland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr1Ma_VYPbQ

Next was an excellent talk by Mike Ananny with an account of the sociotechnical nature of algorithmic errors and the implications for practitioners and policy makers at UCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thMQR8I2oyA

Next was a great talk by Rafael Lalive on how outlawing stated gender preferences in job openings reduces gender segregation across firms at the CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRFRAcC1djg

Next was a nice talk by Alexander Berg on using large image models for image segmentation at UCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_EJA-AghLg

Next was an intriguing talk by Rishi Bommasani on transparency evaluation of large machine learning models at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. There's a lot about this approach that I disagree with, but the scoring methodology implemented here is worth considering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnwWZz6Y2Rc

Next was an engaging talk by Serina Chang on estimating human (social) networks from data in a variety of settings at UW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAEAvQ_lOzo

Last was a short talk by Mustafa Ahci on peer firm learning from non-disclosures (or: the "Streisand Effect" of material contract redactions) at the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtgaA2kI4Fg