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alenawitzlack.bsky.social
@alenawitzlack.bsky.social
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science.org
"One email at a time, one informational interview after another, I became comfortable, confident, and strategic in building my network of mentors."

One mentor isn’t enough, wrote Erika Moore in this 2021 Working Life essay. https://scim.ag/49hp8fS #NationalMentoringDay
A person holding out their arm while people line up on it, with text: One mentor isn’t enough. Here’s how I built a network of mentors
October 27, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted
nature.com
Scientists who began their doctoral studies in 2020 found their feet during a global pandemic and are graduating into an uncertain and chaotic future

go.nature.com/45asSNK
Class of 2025: five PhD students reveal realigned priorities in wake of COVID and cuts
Scientists who began their doctoral studies in 2020 found their feet during a global pandemic and are graduating into an uncertain and chaotic future.
go.nature.com
July 18, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted
science.org
After 60 years, scientists finally know why ginger, calico, and tortoiseshell cats look the way they do. scim.ag/3BpxRxY
Gene behind orange fur in cats found at last
After 60 years, scientists know why gingers, calicos, and tortoiseshells look the way they do
scim.ag
May 21, 2025 at 3:54 PM
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melaniemitchell.bsky.social
Very interesting oral history -- interviews with some top NLP folks on the effects of GenAI on their field:

www.quantamagazine.org/when-chatgpt...
When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History | Quanta Magazine
Researchers in “natural language processing” tried to tame human language. Then came the transformer.
www.quantamagazine.org
May 1, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Reposted
nature.com
Michael Running Wolf leads artificial-intelligence initiatives to revive lost languages and empower Indigenous people.

https://go.nature.com/3EKL32k
Walking in two worlds: how an Indigenous computer scientist is using AI to preserve threatened languages
Michael Running Wolf leads artificial-intelligence initiatives to revive lost languages and empower Indigenous people.
go.nature.com
May 2, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted
elisadoucette.bsky.social
I tell EVERYONE who angsts (as we all do!) about a languishing TBR to read @neuranne.bsky.social's essay about Antilibraries and Tsundoku (積ん読): nesslabs.com/antilibrary
Building an antilibrary: the power of unread books
Unread books are as powerful as the ones we read. An antilibrary is a private collection of unread books capturing the vastness of the unknown.
nesslabs.com
April 11, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted
elisabethjkerr.bsky.social
Next week (8th-9th May) I will be speaking at an online workshop on endangered and minoritized languages, organised by the University of Minho, Portugal

Free for all to join, no registration required: videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/92901459101

Further info: cehum.elach.uminho.pt/events/634/en
Flyer for workshop, intended for "everyone interested in the issue of language endangerment and language documentation". The four panels are "Current tendencies and advances in endangered language documentation", "The study of minoritized languages and their impact on modern linguistic theory", "Languages in contact: The cycle of language endangerment, language loss and (possibly) language emergence", and "New methods and technologies in endangered language preservation and revitalisation".
May 2, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted
nature.com
Researchers and administrators are exploring ways to restructure a rigid hierarchy that can breed power abuses.

https://go.nature.com/3YwJziZ
Can Germany rein in its academic bullying problem?
Researchers and administrators are exploring ways to restructure a rigid hierarchy that can breed power abuses.
go.nature.com
May 6, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Reposted
jennekevanderwal.bsky.social
Online Masterclass in Epistemicity (Sept-Nov 2025)!
The MapLE project organises an online course on epistemicity: the expression of the speaker’s and hearer’s knowledge in the grammar. See the website for more information and how to apply!
MapLE Masterclass
MapLE Masterclass Apply to participate in the online course by filling in this form. What is this course about?When people communicate, they not only exchange information, but they also indicate ho…
epistemicity.net
March 16, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted
hundtmariann.bsky.social
Join this exciting research group headed by Peter Siemund at Hamburg
www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...
Job advertisement
www.uni-hamburg.de
February 13, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Reposted
hundtmariann.bsky.social
And another job opportunity for English Linguists 😀
February 13, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted
carlbergstrom.com
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com
INTRODUCTION
thebullshitmachines.com
February 4, 2025 at 4:12 PM