#AcademicRunPlaylist - 3/19/25

It was a lovely day in Boston, and while running to and from campus for a meeting I was able to listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great talk by Idris Abdulmumin on quantifying LLM generation emotion gaps across African languages at Data Science for Social Impact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5njuNgOId0

Next was an interesting talk by Samet Oymak on understanding and improving language model architectures at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OrlzYnbCqk

Next was an engaging panel on the Council of Europe's convention on AI and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law with Mario Hernández Ramos, Angela Müller, Thompson Chengeta, and Semeli Hadjiloizou at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLjJe_2dtc8

Next was an excellent talk by Qing Qu on how to understand and measure diffusion model performance at MIDAS. This is one of the clearest, most compact scientific explanations of diffusion model inner workings that I've heard, and the investigation here provides new insights too. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a9X2HVDYL8

Next was a compelling/disturbing discussion between Sarah Haan and Michael Levin on the connections between the erosion of shareholder democracy and civic democracy on the Shareholder Primacy podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbyJnFypsY

Next was a great talk by Mengdi Wang on controlled generation for large models at MIDAS https://youtu.be/yNbwmdQTAdQ?si=QGvrBV9EDEQJxVVV&t=311

Next was an important panel on ethical and clinical practice issues around intellectual disabilities and autism at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics with Andria Bianchi, Janet Vogt, Abraham Graber, Laura R. Bowman, Jane Seale, Tim Stainton, and Trudo Lemmens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj-VHIyVbGc

Next was a compelling talk by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva on white normativity, racial habituation, and cracks in racial teams at the LSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8352T1x-pdo

Next was "A Short History of Trans Misogyny" by Jules Gill-Peterson. This is a richly researched work, and one of my only complaints is that I wish it was much longer (of course "short" is in the title). Gill-Peterson focuses much more on specific people as emblematic of broader trends, with the paucity of quantitative data until extremely recently making that a necessity. It's quite US focused, but the examples from US history are insightful. Highly recommend https://www.versobooks.com/products/3054-a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny

Last was "Who's Afraid of Gender?" by Judith Butler. This is probably the best critical studies/philosophy book I've ever read. In witty, devastating prose Butler systematically examines the anti-gender movement to get to the heart of how its proponents understand the world and why political counters, not education, is the appropriate step forward. To be sure, there are some of the standard trappings of critical studies books (copious use of terms like "imaginaries," random insertions/misuse of the word capitalism, etc.), but far less than in nearly every other book in this category that I've read. One comes away with a much better understanding of the dangerous, illogical, hateful current moment, as well as the hard work that has to be done to build a fairer, freer world. Highly recommend https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374608224/whosafraidofgender/