#AcademicRunPlaylist - 3/8/24

It was a long day to end the week, but I was still able to get in a short run and listen to a bunch of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great talk by Naomi Saphra on interpreting LLM training performance through a broader lens at the MIT Embodied Intelligence seminar. Saphra introduces approaches for gaining a much deeper understanding of what is driving performance gains during training, which is necessary for effectively developing the next generation of models https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0tHAZlFGSc

Next was a wide slate of short talks at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing:

Christina Delimitrou (improving cloud memory allocation on all of Google's infrastructure by an astonishing 2%): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mEKx47EVxs

Stefanie Mueller (giving physical objects digital capabilities - highly recommend): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdsmFgLgw68

Skylar Tibbits (programmable materials and self-assembly): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLmDtm2Yn6E

Arvind Satyanarayan (data, deception, and design): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91h_et9lALg

Mina Konaković Luković (inverse design with geometry and AI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa4DGKqERl8&t=3s

Manya Ghobadi (photonic computing for ML): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ7Zp8SACPE

Samuel Madden (learned video querying - with points for attempting to use computer vision algos to understand Shibuya Scramble, highly recommend): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwb2HkRspu0&t=2s

Next was a nice talk by Chien-Ming Huang on designing assistive, collaborative machines at MIT Robotics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_7sxhYVwnw

Next was the excellent monthly rundown of the BLS jobs report at the Burnes Center for Social Change with Alicia Modestino, Elise Gould, and Teresa Ghilarducci https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtJJUw2poXw

Next was an intriguing talk by Zixiang Chen on using self-play fine-tuning to improve LLM performance at the USC Information Sciences Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg4C6YZcqQ4

Next was an insightful talk by Katie Shilton on participatory and ethical data use/reuse at Toronto Metropolitan University. While I'm not sure if the social sciences have the most robust professional ethical frameworks in place (IMO medicine is far and away the champion here), Shilton provides good perspective on the big issues confronting responsible AI research and development today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIbNqSEMydU

Next was a fascinating talk by Martin Rotemberg on firm technological switching and entry in the long transition from water to steam power at the National Bureau of Economic Research. This is an impressive deep dive into the drivers of technology adoption and transition, and that fact that economists are still working to understand these factors in a transition from over 150 years ago should give folks pause when making prognostications about adoption of AI and other newer technologies https://www.youtube.com/live/qhhKI7o7zLI?si=fZoVE0zP3512HWce&t=8886

Last was a timely talk by Nicola Persico on gender disparities in the welfare effect of the minimum wage at NBER. Persico convincingly demonstrates that in the department store sector that women are significantly more productive and that women benefit less from the minimum wage than men in the same job https://www.youtube.com/live/EKKOClgskR0?si=ZOOnO7cJ0Xfw-MkL&t=19342