Zanë (zbucinca@hci.social) Profile Banner
Zanë (zbucinca@hci.social) Profile

@ZanaBucinca

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PhD Candidate @Harvard , human-AI interaction; Kosovo

Cambridge, MA
Joined March 2012
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I am the first person from Kosovo to do a PhD at Harvard, but my most impressive statement remains “I went to school and was friends with Dua Lipa”.
@TIME
TIME
1 month
Introducing our first 2024 #TIME100 cover star: Dua Lipa ( @DUALIPA ). The pop star talked to TIME about her new album, her childhood in Kosovo, and the power of manifestation
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@adilsy_ It wasn’t humble, though.
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This is attracting a lot of attention from people working on AI and I have to promote our recent work on human-centered AI for decision-support, in case it is relevant:
Beyond the quality of our decisions, how will AI assistance affect us -- our growth and improvement, enjoyment, collaboration, or our agency in the workplace? The current design of AI assistance does not consider human-centric objectives; we need methods to account for them.
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@IUILab With one or two hops — but I haven’t tried :)
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Had to make this.
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People often rely on the AI even when the AI’s suggestion is wrong and they would have made a better choice on their own. We introduce cognitive forcing functions as interaction design interventions that compel people to engage analytically with the AI’s explanations. (1/4)
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Not sure why I check my own Google Scholar. Do I secretly hope that a new publication will pop up without me knowing? Who knows.
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Today is the first day of my second internship @MSFTResearch This time I will be working with @jennwvaughan on human-AI decision-making. Somehow I got super lucky in life and get to collaborate with and learn from people I have always looked up to. Very excited!
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Anticipating harms of AI systems before deployment is a critical yet challenging task. We introduce AHA!, a generative framework that given a description of an AI system generates examples of possible harms. (1/4)
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Beyond the quality of our decisions, how will AI assistance affect us -- our growth and improvement, enjoyment, collaboration, or our agency in the workplace? The current design of AI assistance does not consider human-centric objectives; we need methods to account for them.
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Registration fees for CHI are ridiculous this year! As a workshop organizer, I feel unease when sending registration reminders, asking people to spend ~$700-$1200 for a one day workshop!!
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Spending a weekend reading tens of papers in another field, just to add one single sentence to my own: Decades of research in [this field] have found [X, Y, Z]
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I’ll be joining @SaleemaAmershi and @o_saja at @MSFTResearch on a super cool project about Responsible AI. Through-the-roof excited about this!
@rcalo
Ryan Calo
3 years
What are you working on this summer that you’re really excited about?
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Kicked off #CHI2023 in style with the TRAIT workshop — delving into discussions around challenges practitioners face to calibrate (dis)trust and reliance on AI tools. (We were too jet-lagged to think of taking a pic during TRAIT, with more than 50 amazing workshop participants.)
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I'm super excited that our #IUI2020 paper has won a Best Paper Award! Grateful to work with the amazing team @aigelicwings , @kgajos , @roboticwrestler ! Paper:
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One week in New Orleans, filled with small talk with strangers, has made me way too friendly for Boston. #CHI2022
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Working on human-AI collaboration? Interested in evaluating the short and long-term impact of AI in human-AI workflow? Please consider submitting to TREW @CHI this year. @zashktorab @bansalg_ @d19fe8 @JessicaHullman @alison_m_smith @tongshuangwu
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My heart is with all the Ukranian kids. War and the prospect of it shatter everyone’s sense of safety, but have a long lasting effect on that of children. Seeing adults panic, in distress, and with little agency, will take a long time to overcome. I know. I was that kid in 1999.
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As Harvard HCI we have a ‘Tea with interesting people’ and Monday’s interesting guest was Markus Langer. We enjoyed discussing what we want from explainable AI and what explainable AI may actually deliver. Thank you for visiting @LangersMarkus !
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Few people I know find pleasure in everything they do and enjoy every bit of life genuinely. My dad is one of them. This year he lost THREE siblings (two to Covid), was just diagnosed with cancer, and had a major surgery. He still finds joy and wakes up singing.
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Nothing beats the feeling of running an experiment and finding out whether the hypotheses you held so dear are actually supported by the data. Never thought I’d say this: I cannot sleep because I’m psyched about analyzing data!
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People overrely on AI, even when it provides explanations. Join a 🔥 workshop @CHI2022 to help define, measure, and shape appropriate trust and reliance in human-AI teams!
@bansalg_
Gagan Bansal
2 years
🚨Announcing #CHI2022 workshop on Trust and Reliance in AI-Human Teams (TRAIT) ft. keynote by @jdlee888 , panel w/ #HCI & #AI experts, group activities & more! w/ @alison_m_smith , @ZanaBucinca , @tongshuangwu , @d19fe8 , @JessicaHullman , @DrSimoneStumpf See:
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Excited to kick off #CHI2022 with our #TRAIT2022 workshop!⁦ @alison_m_smith ⁩ ⁦ @bansalg_ ⁩ ⁦ @d19fe8 ⁩ ⁦ @DrSimoneStumpf ⁩ ⁦ @tongshuangwu ⁩ ⁦ @JessicaHullman
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Had the privilege of meeting the President of Kosovo and was thoroughly impressed by her vision and optimism for the future of our (formally) young nation. Thank you for meeting and sharing your insights with us, Madam President! @VjosaOsmaniPRKS
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Had so much fun playing with and losing to Kassa Korley (an international master) today ⁦ @MSFTResearch ⁩ in NYC. Also, learned about amazing work towards human-centered AI for chess being done here.
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It was such a pleasure visiting @d3_center at @UMich and learning more in-depth about the amazing interdisciplinary work happening there. Thank you for the invitation and for the warm welcome!
@d3_center
d3center
8 months
Collaborator @ZanaBucinca @Harvard shares insights from her research on optimizing for outcomes and individual differences in AI-assisted decision-making during last Friday's d3center seminar.
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We were excited to host Dr. @SheenaErete at @HarvardHci as part of our Tea With Interesting People series. Our engaging discussion spanned topics from applying Black feminist thought to HCI methods to meaningful community engagement and participatory methods for policy making.
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If you’re at CSCW, join the Interpreting and Explaining AI session to check out our presentation!👇
People often rely on the AI even when the AI’s suggestion is wrong and they would have made a better choice on their own. We introduce cognitive forcing functions as interaction design interventions that compel people to engage analytically with the AI’s explanations. (1/4)
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The pandemic has really hurt my social skills. The other day someone asked me ‘How did you get here?’ and I ended up giving them a short autobiography. It turns out they wanted to know what mode of transportation I used to get to school.
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Jenn is a wonderful mentor! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to work with her and the FATE group.
@jennwvaughan
Jenn Wortman Vaughan
2 years
It's that time of year! The FATE group at @MSFTResearch NYC is now accepting applications for 2023 interns. Internships this year will be IN PERSON again at last! 🥳🎉 For full consideration, apply by December 1 and don't forget your cover letter.
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Initially, I took this class to inform my research in human-AI decision-making. Then I realized I, also, was a human and it turned out to be one of the most useful and interesting (thanks to Tomer’s creativity) classes I have ever taken!
@TomerUllman
Tomer Ullman
2 years
My "Decisions, Big and Small" class is over for this term. Here's the syllabus, in case other people find it useful:
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Mild?! These are definitely not mild symptoms. Please wear a mask. The pandemic is not over.
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It was a great pleasure hosting Ken Holstein today as part of our Tea with Interesting People @HarvardHci ! We discussed the opportunities for impact and the challenges of studying human-AI interaction in real world settings. Thank you for joining us @d19fe8 !
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As @HarvardHCI , we had the pleasure of hosting @UpolEhsan in our Tea With Interesting People series. We got to discuss and hear the fascinating background story on Upol’s research — from XAI beyond explaining the black box to pitfalls of XAI and algorithmic imprint.
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Just passed my qual exam. So lucky and excited to get guidance from an amazing committee for my future projects! @kgajos @FinalDoshi @TomerUllman
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Had the pleasure of speaking to young girls in Kosovo about AI & machine learning, achieving career goals, and more!
@ipkofoundation
IPKO Foundation
3 years
We joined forces with @USEmbPristina , @USAIDKosovo through #ASSETProgram and Digital School, to bring another successful edition of marking #GirlChildDay 👩 through 'AI&Machine Learning' Workshop Read more about today's program and ceremony: @ZanaBucinca
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Really @FAccTConference ? 14 pages?
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@TomerUllman Close enough..
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Thanks for having me and thank you to all the amazing MITxHarvard Women in AI! Happy to be part of this community!
@mitxharvard_wai
MITxHarvard Women in AI
3 years
YOUNG SCIENTISTS SPOTLIGHT: Learn about the intersection between #AI and Human-Computer Interaction, decision-making systems, and #AIforGood with @Harvard Intelligent Interactive Systems PhD student @ZanaBucinca , in a new interview by Shelley Choi.
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A first year PhD student doing research under their advisor’s supervision.
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#CHI2022 🤞🎉
@sarahclazarus
Sarah Lazarus
2 years
what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious month between covid waves
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Realized today is Labor Day only after I couldn’t get coffee at the cafeteria. Despite living in the US for three years, I still randomly show up at work on national holidays.
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On my desk today. I have the sweetest, most thoughtful colleagues! Thank you @hermansaksono
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Language models are expensive to train. But once trained, why not use them? In my master’s thesis @IUILab , I proposed an approach for generating affective language by leveraging large pre-trained models. The paper has been accepted @IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.
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I am far less concerned about people using LLMs to write papers as opposed to review papers. Please don’t!
@IttefaqM
Muhammad Ittefaq, PhD
7 months
I reviewed a paper recently and recommended a rejection. Other reviewer recommended R @R and suggested literature to cite. After editor’s decision, I checked the suggested literature, out of 15, none of them were real studies. I am literally stunned! #ChatGPT
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There’s more time to submit to TREW! Due to popular demand, we’ve extended the submission deadline to March 1st.
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Come join our workshop on Regulatable ML!
@hima_lakkaraju
𝙷𝚒𝚖𝚊 𝙻𝚊𝚔𝚔𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚓𝚞
5 months
AI regulation has become a hot topic of debate in recent months. So, we decided to bring this conversation to #NeurIPS2023 ! Come join us at the #RegulatableML workshop! ⏰ 8:55am - 5:30pm, Saturday, Dec 15 📍 Room 215-216 🔗 📽️ …
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I downloaded the data to see the change over the years (i.e., are we getting happier?). Here’s an interesting graph that came out:
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@StefanInKosovo
Stefan in Kosovo
3 years
#Kosovo ranks #33 in the international happiness index; by far the highest in the region. Sad to see that two direct neighbors are among the four most unhappy European countries. 33. Kosovo 48. Serbia 60. Croatia 64. Bosnia and H 72. Montenegro 93. Albania 94. North Macedonia
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I was born in Kosovo. 4 years later war happened. I moved to Turkey. 4 years later coup happened. I came to the US in 2019...
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So fun to watch and be part of this! (I can’t believe I am in the same video with Mark Zuckerberg😅)
@krvarshney
Kush Varshney कुश वार्ष्णेय
2 years
Tell me why. XAI, I want it that way! Amazing music video on explainability in machine learning by @FinaleDoshi 's lab. My cameo along with @QVeraLiao @zywind Ronny and Amit is at 3:04.
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One of my hidden joys is telling people “I’m from Kosovo”, waiting 3-4 seconds to enjoy watching their perplexed looks as they try, but fail to summon up every geography lesson they ever attended, before explaining “..a small country in Southeastern Europe”.
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Less than 4 weeks to the deadline!
Working on human-AI collaboration? Interested in evaluating the short and long-term impact of AI in human-AI workflow? Please consider submitting to TREW @CHI this year. @zashktorab @bansalg_ @d19fe8 @JessicaHullman @alison_m_smith @tongshuangwu
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Thank you everyone for submitting to the workshop and sharing your work! Thank you @carriejcai and Michael Terry for the terrific keynote talk! And thank you Stephanie Ballard, Pamela Mishkin, Devansh Saxena, and Aaron Halfaker for the insightful panel!
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TRAIT submission deadline is in a month! We welcome submissions to either research or industry track on trust and reliance in human-AI teams, including but not limited to human-AI teams consisting of one human working with one AI. For more details see CfP:
@bansalg_
Gagan Bansal
1 year
🚨 Working on #AI + #HCI ? Join the 2nd #CHI2023 workshop on Trust & Reliance in AI-Human Teams (TRAIT), focused on real-world human-AI use cases. Keynote: @Carryveggies & Michael Terry. w/ @alison_m_smith @ZanaBucinca @tongshuangwu @d19fe8 @JessicaHullman @DrSimoneStumpf
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Congrats to Dr. Huber!⁦ @mrhuberb
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Without theory, empirical research is reduced to 'playing combinatorics' with sets of variables, and scientific progress is, at best, haphazard. (Weber 1987)
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@a_a_cabrera You may find @qiaosi_wang ’s work relevant.
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2 out of 11 total athletes from Kosovo have won the gold medal! 🇽🇰
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New study on Lab in the Wild: Given descriptions of people, can you recommend exercises that suit their constraints, goals, preferences, and needs? Compare yourself to other test takers!
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Forever.
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I got my first dose today! To people who have access to, but refuse to get the vaccine: Millions of people worldwide long to be in your shoes. Thousands die daily before having access to a vaccine. Go get vaccinated. Save lives.
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For each tweet that doesn’t end with “That’s it. That’s the tweet.”, I’m infinitely left pondering whether that was the tweet.
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Native language is the language you use to count the last 10 push-ups.
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Woke up to ~20 comments from MTurkers on how they found my experiment fun, educational and interesting.
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@MaZm003 ⁩ live at #CHI2022
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Me, catching the Bayesian fever:
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Programming is to a computer scientist, as a brush is to an artist. It's solely a tool to "the art".
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Saddened that I will not travel to Italy for #IUI2020 . I was very excited to attend and present @ACMIUI for the first time. There were also so many fantastic workshops I was looking forward to. I wish everyone affected by the virus quick recovery!
@aigelicwings
Phoebe Lin 林凯欣
4 years
Unfortunately due to the spread of coronavirus in Italy, I and @ZanaBucinca and @roboticwrestler will not be able to present our paper in person at #IUI2020 . Can't help but feel disappointed but also sad for the people who are even more directly impacted by the virus.
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@TaliaRinger Switch to HCI. The distribution is skewed towards kinder people compared to other CS areas.
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@merrierm I was going to enthusiastically recommend @joon_s_pk ‘s Social Simulacra, but then remembered that you were one of the authors on that paper.
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What?!!! Tell me you know nothing about history and politics without telling me.
@elonmusk
Elon Musk
2 years
@Podolyak_M Maybe a similar approach to Kosovo
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Thank you @UNDP_Kosovo for featuring me among inspiring women in STEM. If I’ve become an inspiring woman in STEM, it’s because of the constellation of inspiring and strong women I’ve been lucky to have as role models.
@UNDP_Kosovo
UNDP Kosovo
3 months
Zana, integrating human values into #ArtificialIntelligence . 📲 The world needs science, and science needs women 👩‍🔬
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Derisa 80% e rinise e fillojne diten n’ora 12, e 80% t'dites se mbetun e kalojne n'social media, edhe shume e shume dekada na duhen per me pa perparim n’Kosove. Flejm, se bohet mire!
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Received this email today. I have been staring at the phrase ‘Preferably Internet Explorer’ for a while now.
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Today, I attended two PhD defenses in two different time zones: one in Turkey, one in Korea. I guess this is the upside of a pandemic, folks.
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@berkustun I found Perusall an engaging tool, both as a student and as a TF. Students can comment and ask questions on a shared version of the paper. These comments help the discussion moderator address the questions in class and guide the discussion according to the students’ interests.
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@HelenasResearch your wish came true!
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@a_a_cabrera @FAccTConference Most probably. Now half of the paper is in the appendix. I guess this is the price I have to pay for missing the CSCW deadline :)
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My favorite meritrocratic moment in chess is when a pawn that has ‘worked hard enough’ becomes a queen.
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New test on Lab in the Wild! When an Artificially Intelligent system explains what it is doing, can we really predict its decisions? How good are YOU at getting into an AI's head? Find out and compare yourself to others! (The test takes ~7 minutes.)
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Extremely grateful to have worked with my collaborators @kgajos and Maja Malaya on this! (4/4) Preprint:
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Me hanen, berrinen, lulen - Ortaköy http://t.co/CKeDYM8c0f
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Obama was the coolest.
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To audit our work for intervention-generated inequalities, we further analyze how effective our interventions are for people with differences in intrinsic motivation to think. Our results highlight the value and feasibility of auditing HCI innovations. (3/4)
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@karpathy It’s an individual difference. Some people have a more vivid mental imagery than others. Some are not able to visualize any imagery at all (aphantasia). There’s a questionnaire that measures the vividness of visual imagery (VVIQ):
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In creative work, such as writing or research, content with one’s own work is reached when your generative model matches your internal discriminative model (i.e., you classify your own (best) work as high quality). (1/2)
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Searching for related work in fields other than your area of expertise.
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@_jessiejsmith_ @MSFTResearch Thank you for organizing the intern events!! So happy to have met you! (How did I miss this invitation? Is there a recording?)
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But they raise concerns about practitioners overrelying on such tools. We discuss design implications for designing tools for AI impact assessment. Preprint:  (4/4)
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@HsseinMzannar @FAccTConference Exactly. And FAccT is not letting them. 14 pages single-column limit!
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@begusgasper Those malfunctioned a lot, so I also used to be stuck for extended periods in there. But I’m sorry you spent your whole childhood there!!
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Some papers are a pure work of art. Here’s one I came across recently: POTs What makes this paper exceptional, in my view, is the novelty of the argument (i.e., Fairness, as typically defined in ML, is not enough. (1/2)
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@niloufar_s A retweet ‘button’ for papers — conferences/journals republish past papers that are nominated by the community
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When "Translate from Estonian" appears beneath Albanian tweets
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I love how sometimes I proofread emails *after* I send them.
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Today, @GescheJoost took us on a journey from Africa and China to the Western Countries by looking at the digital divide across cultures, highlighting the role of digitization in the amplification of social inequalities and proposing initial steps to combat those inequalities.
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Feeling blesseddd http://t.co/gJ8rp6pXJO
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