Blurbs

One of the most transformational influence in my career (possibly unknown to him) had been my first intern mentor @abeirami and this kinda hits hard. It is easy to “dunk” on papers, and it is easier to kinda…be annoyed by them - but I guess, my point is, if you cannot help someone with the post/writing/critique, the content probably does not need to exist.

Ahmad Beirami

@abeirami

· Follow

Replying to @linylinx

Optimize the "positivity" reward of your what you do rather than "engagingness" :-)

Dec 9, 2023, 10:45 PM

3

Reply

1 reply

Ahmad: Doesn't allow reward hacking but the policy would generalize better over time!

While one of the biggest problems in machine learning remain effective safety guards — a bigger problem is measurement of safety and “alignment” per se on the end goal of what an unbiased machine learning model looks like. For something like credit scoring, it is more obvious, gender should not be a factor in deciding what the credit prediction is. For something more human-centered that is affected by gender, the question remains - do you want to learn the associations that exist in the society (between say, emotion and gender → which possibly can help with passively tracking mood fluctuations in say, bipolar disorder), or do you want the model to “not see” those variables. Which of those two is the ideal outcome?

I came across this amazing Expandable Abstracts demo from AI2. This is what I imagine interactive LLM integration to look like! In general, I have been finding Wonders and Metaphor more useful than Elicit, and that is sad. I like how elicit can process the paper, but the scraping is so old, and the semantic search is poorer, that the actual novelty in output is no longer useful.

A response to the controversial idea that PhD students should barely scrape by in emergencies and rely on Blue Cupboard to feed themselves.

I recently received some criticism for my comments over the past couple of days, which seemed to justify the idea that PhD students don't need livable stipends. Let me make myself perfectly clear: that's bullshit. No one should have to choose between paying bills and getting essential medical care or feeding their pets. If you're one of those people who thinks barely scraping by is okay for PhD students, we don't see eye to eye.

From Q2 2020 to Q2 2022, unforeseen personal circumstances severely impacted my ability to complete projects and maintain consistent communication. These events causing significant disruptions included the tragic loss of my maternal grandfather to cancer (2020), followed by the sudden demise of my paternal grandmother due to COVID-19 (2021), and then the demands of managing major health crises involving my father and remaining grandmother (2022). However, having now defended my PhD and made significant strides in task delivery, I've found my footing again. As a former intern at Meta and AI2, the personal turmoil I experienced inhibited me from concluding the projects I was passionate about, leaving me deeply saddened. Over time, and as my stability returned, I made private progress on these projects, but feelings of embarrassment and regret kept me from re-establishing contact. I acknowledge the past disappointments during this challenging period and sincerely apologize. Today, with confidence and affirmation, I assure that such setbacks will no longer impede my professional dedication and, with renewed commitment, I take responsibility for any lingering tasks.