Zach Levonian
@zwlevonian.bsky.social
Human–computer interaction researcher. PhD from University of Minnesota. Tacoma, WA. Mastodon: zwlevonian@hci.social
Pinned
Zach Levonian
@zwlevonian.bsky.social
· Feb 6
Blog Index
Zachary Levonian’s blog, for self-published writing. Zach is a researcher and data scientist with a PhD in Human-computer Interaction.
levon003.github.io
Hi! My name is Zach, and I'm a computer science researcher working in industry. You can learn more about me and find my writing (peer-reviewed and otherwise) on my blog: levon003.github.io/blog/
WikiEdu partners with college instructors to have students edit Wikipedia. ~5% of student edits were bad gen AI use, using a Pangram detection system. Biggest problem was mismatch between generated sentence and the associated citation, which is hard to catch.
wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01...
wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01...
Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025
Like many organizations, Wiki Education has grappled with generative AI, its impacts, opportunities, and threats, for several years. As an organization that runs large-scale programs to bring new e…
wikiedu.org
February 3, 2026 at 6:02 PM
WikiEdu partners with college instructors to have students edit Wikipedia. ~5% of student edits were bad gen AI use, using a Pangram detection system. Biggest problem was mismatch between generated sentence and the associated citation, which is hard to catch.
wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01...
wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01...
Reposted by Zach Levonian
I am recruiting a postdoc in HCI & AI!
Interested in augmenting human thinking and learning, futures of work & education, participatory AI, collective intelligence, or related topics? Please get in touch! This 2-year position will be based at a top university in Europe (email or DM for more info)
Interested in augmenting human thinking and learning, futures of work & education, participatory AI, collective intelligence, or related topics? Please get in touch! This 2-year position will be based at a top university in Europe (email or DM for more info)
February 2, 2026 at 2:59 PM
I am recruiting a postdoc in HCI & AI!
Interested in augmenting human thinking and learning, futures of work & education, participatory AI, collective intelligence, or related topics? Please get in touch! This 2-year position will be based at a top university in Europe (email or DM for more info)
Interested in augmenting human thinking and learning, futures of work & education, participatory AI, collective intelligence, or related topics? Please get in touch! This 2-year position will be based at a top university in Europe (email or DM for more info)
Reposted by Zach Levonian
--dangerously-skip-understanding
February 1, 2026 at 8:08 PM
--dangerously-skip-understanding
Reposted by Zach Levonian
The future is software writing its own software. Which is why I'm so in love with Pi: a coding agent that can extend itself :) lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/31/pi/
Pi: The Minimal Agent Within OpenClaw
A gentle introduction to the Pi coding agent and why I think it’s a glimpse into the future of software.
lucumr.pocoo.org
January 31, 2026 at 2:23 PM
The future is software writing its own software. Which is why I'm so in love with Pi: a coding agent that can extend itself :) lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/31/pi/
One of my first dates with my future wife was at Glam Doll. I’ve walked by that spot dozens of times going to the gym. Abolish ICE.
The Twin Cities indie game dev community used to meet every Friday at Glam Doll Donuts. We put an arcade cabinet there for awhile. It was a happy, silly place. We would get bahn mi and pho on that same street for lunch. NOW IT IS A FUCKING MEMORIAL TO OUR OWN GOVERNMENT MURDERING ALEX PRETTI. FUCK.
January 24, 2026 at 10:22 PM
One of my first dates with my future wife was at Glam Doll. I’ve walked by that spot dozens of times going to the gym. Abolish ICE.
Reasonable take. I like the idea of more CS pedagogy focused on understanding real-world complex codebases. the-learning-agency.com/the-cutting-...
January 15, 2026 at 11:46 PM
Reasonable take. I like the idea of more CS pedagogy focused on understanding real-world complex codebases. the-learning-agency.com/the-cutting-...
I missed this last month from @tilmanbayer.bsky.social: "AI finds errors in 90% of October's Featured Articles". Great example of human-in-the-loop LLM use for verifying Wikipedia articles. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-12-01/Opinion - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
January 10, 2026 at 6:25 PM
I missed this last month from @tilmanbayer.bsky.social: "AI finds errors in 90% of October's Featured Articles". Great example of human-in-the-loop LLM use for verifying Wikipedia articles. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...
Did a quick link roundup for Doll's Verification-Driven Development. Very interesting approach. levon003.github.io/2026/01/07/v...
January 9, 2026 at 5:08 PM
Did a quick link roundup for Doll's Verification-Driven Development. Very interesting approach. levon003.github.io/2026/01/07/v...
Reposted by Zach Levonian
i liked @odannyboy.bsky.social 's breakdown of the four visions of AI futures --
odannyboy.medium.com/the-four-hor...
odannyboy.medium.com/the-four-hor...
The Four Horsemen of the AIpocalypse
AI is fracturing into at least four different visions of the future.
odannyboy.medium.com
January 6, 2026 at 3:24 PM
i liked @odannyboy.bsky.social 's breakdown of the four visions of AI futures --
odannyboy.medium.com/the-four-hor...
odannyboy.medium.com/the-four-hor...
I really can’t imagine how different my human–computer interaction PhD would have been if building reasonable-fidelity prototypes took me weeks instead of months…
Since lots of science research is realizing an MVP of sorts, I think there are big efficiency gains to be had there. And the barrier to better code (e.g. testing) in such MVPs that scientists would skip for the effort needed, is instead now "why not?" given the on-demand hand-holding.
December 31, 2025 at 2:48 AM
I really can’t imagine how different my human–computer interaction PhD would have been if building reasonable-fidelity prototypes took me weeks instead of months…
Reposted by Zach Levonian
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
Medical breakthroughs in 2025
... and a happy new year.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev
December 28, 2025 at 6:37 PM
New post!
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.
Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...
Black pill
UX Research is pretty much already gone and the nail is in the coffin of type A data science. Type B Data Science is still going strong
December 28, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Black pill
This but unironically
love to thread a "some shit, idk, it's whatever" junk drawer object thru every function in my application
December 26, 2025 at 9:31 AM
This but unironically
December 23, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Reposted by Zach Levonian
In a new blog post, I argue that CS is already an empirical discipline, even though we often act as if it is not (mostly to our students).
doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...
doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...
The Empiricization of Computer Science
Scientific disciplines, like nations, have their own founding myths.
doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz
December 17, 2025 at 2:40 PM
In a new blog post, I argue that CS is already an empirical discipline, even though we often act as if it is not (mostly to our students).
doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...
doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-empiri...
Interesting argument, worth reading. I respect Togelius for biting the bullet and explicitly arguing that "expanding humanity's collective knowledge" is more morally important than acquiring life-saving technology developments, although I think this is a (very) hard view to support.
December 8, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Interesting argument, worth reading. I respect Togelius for biting the bullet and explicitly arguing that "expanding humanity's collective knowledge" is more morally important than acquiring life-saving technology developments, although I think this is a (very) hard view to support.
This is particularly impressive to me because Arcadia sucks! Proof you can find value in anything 🤗
December 2, 2025 at 12:09 PM
This is particularly impressive to me because Arcadia sucks! Proof you can find value in anything 🤗
Reposted by Zach Levonian
This has been a challenge for cs.HC: we need folks to step up and support that category. Please contact me if you are interested in moderating either DH or HC! Thanks!
November 29, 2025 at 7:27 PM
This has been a challenge for cs.HC: we need folks to step up and support that category. Please contact me if you are interested in moderating either DH or HC! Thanks!
I regularly see critiques of pleasing-but-false ideas, but I've also had to work quite hard to shape my information feed to include that kind of information. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit here: human–computer interaction researchers should build tools that make feed-shaping easier for people.
When's the last time you heard someone actually critique an idea they found ideologically pleasing? It's incredibly rare and getting rarer, and it's an artifact of us all existing in informational spaces we've specifically selected to tell us what we know we already want to hear.
November 12, 2025 at 6:23 PM
I regularly see critiques of pleasing-but-false ideas, but I've also had to work quite hard to shape my information feed to include that kind of information. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit here: human–computer interaction researchers should build tools that make feed-shaping easier for people.
Worth reading. Some nice reflections here.
Are we approaching a Turing Test for Teaching? A deep dive into the evidence on AI tutoring. carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-algori...
November 11, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Worth reading. Some nice reflections here.
Reposted by Zach Levonian
“look how much better my favorite model is compared compared to these other TRASH MODELS😒😒😒 when I specifically chose a DGP that matches my models assumptions and not the others’😌”
November 7, 2025 at 4:13 AM
“look how much better my favorite model is compared compared to these other TRASH MODELS😒😒😒 when I specifically chose a DGP that matches my models assumptions and not the others’😌”
Feeling major #CSCW2025 FOMO this week! But I enjoyed virtual participation and I'm honored to share that I won a Best Paper Award. Here's a blog post about my study: levon003.github.io/2025/10/22/c...
CSCW best paper: “Peer Recommendation Interventions for Health-related Social Support”
Using recommendations to help people find peer support online. Adaptation of a talk at CSCW 2025.
levon003.github.io
October 22, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Feeling major #CSCW2025 FOMO this week! But I enjoyed virtual participation and I'm honored to share that I won a Best Paper Award. Here's a blog post about my study: levon003.github.io/2025/10/22/c...
Reposted by Zach Levonian
Love this story about how Wikipedia fends off censorship and disinformation: "Wikipedia’s first and best line of defense is to explain how Wikipedia works." www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
September 22, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Love this story about how Wikipedia fends off censorship and disinformation: "Wikipedia’s first and best line of defense is to explain how Wikipedia works." www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
Created a small tool for updating a Slack channel when new papers are added to a Zotero library. Totally free using Google Cloud Run's basic tier. levon003.github.io/2025/09/19/z...
Zotero Slack Connector: a Slack bot for notifications about new papers
I created a small open-source tool for notifying a Slack channel when new papers are added to a Zotero group.
levon003.github.io
September 19, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Created a small tool for updating a Slack channel when new papers are added to a Zotero library. Totally free using Google Cloud Run's basic tier. levon003.github.io/2025/09/19/z...
A quick love letter to the Internet Archive's free online book loans: it makes it so easy to verify extremely obscure facts! I'm constantly using it to verify info on Wikipedia.
September 13, 2025 at 6:32 PM
A quick love letter to the Internet Archive's free online book loans: it makes it so easy to verify extremely obscure facts! I'm constantly using it to verify info on Wikipedia.