A. Feder Cooper
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afedercooper.bsky.social
A. Feder Cooper
@afedercooper.bsky.social
ML researcher, MSR + Stanford postdoc, future Yale professor

https://afedercooper.info
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
Bill Ackman gotta be on the third draft of a tweet longer than Middlemarch right now
November 5, 2025 at 2:52 AM
I’m kinda known as a copyright person, but (even in memorization) I mainly study how to draw reliable conclusions from large-scale AI/ML systems. There’s a long spiel why, but today I feel defeated. 100 hours/week on this for 6 years, just to find out a parent treats Gemini in search as ground-truth
November 1, 2025 at 4:44 PM
The NeurIPS position track didn't take a large number of extraordinary papers that surpassed the acceptance bar, limiting the acceptance rate to an unusually low 6%.

If you have a rejected paper at the intersection of ML and law, consider submitting to ACM CSLaw '26.
2026-CFP - ACM Symposium on Computer Science & Law
2026 Call for Papers 5th ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law March 3-5, 2026 Berkeley, California The 5th ACM…
computersciencelaw.org
September 26, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
Our paper "Machine Unlearning Doesn't Do What You Think" was accepted for presentation at NeurIPS

Congrats @afedercooper.bsky.social and @katherinelee.bsky.social, who led the effort

arxiv.org/abs/2412.06966
Machine Unlearning Doesn't Do What You Think: Lessons for Generative AI Policy, Research, and Practice
We articulate fundamental mismatches between technical methods for machine unlearning in Generative AI, and documented aspirations for broader impact that these methods could have for law and policy. ...
arxiv.org
September 26, 2025 at 6:37 PM
One more week to submit to CSLaw '26!!
15 days left to submit to the CSLaw '26 main track! (archival and non-archival)!
The CFP for ACM CSLaw '26 is up! Deadline for main-track papers (archival and non-archival) is September 30!

computersciencelaw.org/2026
September 24, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
For an update on the state of play in the generative AI copyright cases, try this podcast: shows.acast.com/arbiters-of-...
AI Copyright Lawsuits with Pam Samuelson | Scaling Laws
shows.acast.com
September 16, 2025 at 8:52 PM
15 days left to submit to the CSLaw '26 main track! (archival and non-archival)!
September 15, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
was just looking for @seantcollins.com’s “goofy at the crucification” post and google is so cool now
September 13, 2025 at 1:25 AM
After 2 years in press, it's published!

"Talkin' 'Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain," is out in the 72nd volume of the Journal of the Copyright Society

copyrightsociety.org/journal-entr...

written with @katherinelee.bsky.social & @jtlg.bsky.social (2023)
TALKIN' 'BOUT AI GENERATION: COPYRIGHT AND THE GENERATIVE-AI SUPPLY CHAIN | The Copyright Society
We know copyright
copyrightsociety.org
September 10, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
The Bartz v. Anthropic settlement is the polar opposite of the Google Books settlement: a discrete one-time payment for past copying, on a discrete and closed-ended class, and making no attempt at all to deal with a larger forward-looking issues.
September 5, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
Here is the direct link to the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.12546
August 21, 2025 at 10:51 PM
I’m excited to share that my paper with @jtlg.bsky.social , "The Files are in the Computer: On Copyright, Memorization, and Generative AI" (April 2024), is out in the AI Disrupting Law symposium issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review!

The full issue is here: scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/
Chicago-Kent Law Review | Chicago-Kent College of Law
scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu
August 21, 2025 at 8:18 PM
The CFP for ACM CSLaw '26 is up! Deadline for main-track papers (archival and non-archival) is September 30!

computersciencelaw.org/2026
2026 - ACM Symposium on Computer Science & Law
CS&Law 2026 5th ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law March 3–5, 2026 Berkeley, California Computing, software, and the Internet…
computersciencelaw.org
August 8, 2025 at 11:18 PM
I understand what the underlying probabilities mean, and therefore why this was worth giving a go. But I’m still occasionally like “How tf can someone extract entire books from a frontier company’s flagship LLM? Like we got _all_ of HP 1 with just ‘Mr. and Mrs. D’ as the seed prompt? What??”
July 25, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Had a great time and learned a ton at ICML. But as an introvert, I’ve used up all my talking budget until the fall. Excited to get back to full time researchy things, and will hopefully have some exciting new results to share soon!
July 21, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
Strangers love to tell me “I can’t understand you, because of your MASK”. Dude, I am literally someone who gets paid to speak to large audiences while wearing a mask—I know I can be understood!
July 17, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Happening now! Please swing by to talk about measurement!
July 16, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Excited to be at #ICML '25! Please reach out if you'd like to chat. You can also find me presenting work at a few different spots, listed below!
July 16, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Feeling so excited + grateful to be representing this paper at #ICML! Please stop by to talk about how to do more valid measurement for evaling gen AI systems!

Work led by the incomparable @hannawallach.bsky.social and @azjacobs.bsky.social as a part of Microsoft’s AI and Society initiative!!
If you're at @icmlconf.bsky.social this week, come check out our poster on "Position: Evaluating Generative AI Systems Is a Social Science Measurement Challenge" presented by the amazing @afedercooper.bsky.social from 11:30am--1:30pm PDT on Weds!!! icml.cc/virtual/2025...
ICML Poster Position: Evaluating Generative AI Systems Is a Social Science Measurement ChallengeICML 2025
icml.cc
July 15, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Some minor updates to our recent books memorization paper! I’ve separated out a new section 5 that I hope makes some of our ML findings about memorization clearer to a wider audience.

Preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2505.12546

1/8
Extracting memorized pieces of (copyrighted) books from open-weight language models
Plaintiffs and defendants in copyright lawsuits over generative AI often make sweeping, opposing claims about the extent to which large language models (LLMs) have memorized plaintiffs' protected expr...
arxiv.org
July 14, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
"Llama 3.1 70B memorizes some books, like Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone and 1984, almost entirely. ... HP is so memorized that, using a seed prompt consisting of just the first line of chapter 1, we can deterministically generate the entire book near-verbatim."

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Extracting memorized pieces of (copyrighted) books from open-weight language models
Plaintiffs and defendants in copyright lawsuits over generative AI often make sweeping, opposing claims about the extent to which large language models (LLMs) h
papers.ssrn.com
July 10, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by A. Feder Cooper
“these are hypertechnocratic” is one of the most important things you can draw from this morning’s ruling. In other words, hesitate before drawing parallels between this case and your most (loved|hated) AI training use case.

(@chup.blakereid.org’s whole thread is great)
June 24, 2025 at 11:52 PM