brendan o’connor
@brenocon.bsky.social
natural language processing, social science, umass, western mass http://brenocon.com he/him
🏆The Computational Linguistics High Impact Paper Award recognises papers published in Computational Linguistics within the past 3–5 years that have already demonstrated exceptional scholarly impact. Congratulations to the authors of doi.org/10.1162/coli... #NLProc #CLjournal @chrmanning.bsky.social
Text as Data has been a wonderful, long-running, non-archival workshop for empirical research at the intersection of AI and social science (especially work involving text). After a few years off, it will be happening again this year as a one-day event in early October!
Denis@dpeskoff.bsky.social · 3w agoDo you work across computational methods, social sciences, and the humanities? Submit to Text as Data 2026! 📄 One-page submissions 🔓 Non-archival ⏰ Due August 1 📍 October 5 @UCBerkeley tada2026.org
Text as Data is happening at Berkeley right before COLM. Please share!
Denis@dpeskoff.bsky.social · 3w agoDo you work across computational methods, social sciences, and the humanities? Submit to Text as Data 2026! 📄 One-page submissions 🔓 Non-archival ⏰ Due August 1 📍 October 5 @UCBerkeley tada2026.org
With my ACL PC abilities, I wanted to characterize who these folks are, whether they're actually "outsiders", whether their papers are much less likely to be accepted, is this growth just LLM slop? The whole analsis is here medium.com/@jurgens_245...
Is the ACL Rolling Review actually broken?
ARR is broken! ARR is being overwhelmed with papers from outsiders! LLM-generated slop is ruining our peer review! There are not enough…
medium.com
Comments can be submitted here - www.regulations.gov/commenton/OM... i submitted this, fwiw
![The proposed rule change is a terrible idea - it would impose biased, arbitrary, political control over scientific funding, and greatly harm U.S. research, technology development, and higher education. The extremely biased language in the document indicates the worst of intentions to implement the policy. Also note:
- Congress already conducts robust oversight of federal grant-making agencies, including regular reporting and testimony from agency directors. For example, the National Science Foundation director is legally required to submit biennial reports to Congress (42 U.S. Code § 1885d), and in the past NSF directors and assistant directors have regularly given testimony to Congress. Congressional oversight is completely sufficient to investigate all of the issues alleged here, and remedy them if they turn out to be actual issues. Members of Congress have indeed issues critical reports in the past about particular grant-funded projects they wished scientific grant-making agencies to change, as is their proper right and authority.
[...]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rff2etl7xl6ffchnxgsg66bp/bafkreih2t6ehfpmlc3o3bwzumkxbdrywug7fcwduo2sf7uwjxf63hokg7q)
Jacquelyn Gill@jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 4w agoMonday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).
Scholarly folks who have ever received federal funding: today is the deadline for public comment on proposed revisions that will decimate our national research capacity and replace expertise with political whim. Please consider throwing in your 2¢. See below for some useful links and encouragement.
Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).
Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 4w agoThere's an OMB rule change that would require political oversight of scientific grants, and could pull any that don't "reflect presidential priorities" Another country has tried this before! It was the USSR and it was called Lysenkoism. By @thsaey.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-...
✨ We are hiring @crestumr.bsky.social ✨ Post-doc position, up to 3 years, in a Horizon project. Profile: at the intersection of NLP & Social Sciences. More information here: shorturl.at/TxDLN 🥰 RT appreciated 🥰
Post-doctoral Position: Computational Analysis of Judicial Decisions (CREST/CNRS-Ecole polytechnique) – CSS @ IP-Paris
Site web de l'axe sciences sociales computationnelles du CREST-CNRS. Cours et tutoriels pour l'analyse des données numériques en sciences sociales.
shorturl.at
1/ New @Nature! We study how powerful institutions shape the information environment for LLMs. Commercial LLM training is opaque, so we trace a path from state-coordinated media -> training data -> model responses.
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a... Now up at @knightcolumbia.org - Cosma Shalizi and myself on "AI as Social Technology." It says that AI models are really a technology of social mediation that allow humans to connect with thoughts of other humans. Short-ish thread with major points follows.
AI as Social Technology
knightcolumbia.org
What is cultural awareness in LLMs & what has been done in the literature for creating cross-cultural datasets, strategies for cultural inclusion & methodologies that have been used for benchmarking cultural awareness? This survey answers all these questions: doi.org/10.1162/COLI... #NLProc
I'll be at #ICML2026 on July 10-11 in Seoul to speak at the Workshop on Culture x AI: Evaluating AI as a Cultural Technology. The workshop is currently accepting submissions, with humanities, ML, HCI, and social/cognitive sciences all welcome. Submit papers by May 1! Join us in Seoul! 🇰🇷
Doing AI Differently | Culture × AI Workshop
doingaidifferently.org
terrible (...we go there a lot)
The New York Times@nytimes.com · 4mo agoHampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, will permanently shutter, joining an epidemic of college closures. It's the alma mater of the filmmaker Ken Burns, who made his first documentary movie as a student there.
It's crazy and terrible to eliminate SBE, and especially the idea NSF would do it in violation of Congressional direction. Even if you only cared about AI, it's important. SBE's support of opinion data has crucially helped AI alignment research; for example, data from GSS for LLM eval & modeling.
I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.
Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo agoNSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2
deleted a QT discussing a shockingly sexist email written by roger schank. these people were so evil just seeing their emails is not good
I am flabbergasted I am by how much vibe coding has expanded my capacities as a scientist and teacher. In the last few weeks, I've mocked up class demos of a live turing test, generated cross-references for an encyclopedia, and prototyped new tablet tasks for developmental psych. It's wild.
to turn off autoplaying video on the bluesky mobile app select the icon in the top left corner go to settings go to content and media make sure "autoplay videos and gifs" is toggled off
✨The NLP+CSS workshop is returning to ACL 2026!✨ And this year, we have a new shared task with prizes! Website/CfP: sites.google.com/site/nlpandc... Deadlines: March 5 (direct), March 24 (pre-reviewed ARR) #NLProc #CompSocialSci #ComputationalSocialScience #ACL2026NLP @aclmeeting.bsky.social
NLP+CSS Workshops
https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-hand-fist-bump-1068523/
sites.google.com
"Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually." Good piece by @mikemakowsky.bsky.social economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/12/29/p... I'd argue that the "new era of theory" is already underway, though, led not by economists, but by comp social sci/cultural evolution folks.
Part II: Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually.
Three years ago I ruminated on why agent-based modeling never got any real traction in economics. It got a suprising amount of attention and I continue to receive emails about it to this day. I too…
economistwritingeveryday.com
The next edition of the NLP+CSS will be at ACL 2026! It includes an open-ended shared task (work with the Opioid Industry Documents Archive) with travel grants as prizes!
@nlpandcss.bsky.social · 8mo ago✨The NLP+CSS workshop is returning to ACL 2026!✨ And this year, we have a new shared task with prizes! Website/CfP: sites.google.com/site/nlpandc... Deadlines: March 5 (direct), March 24 (pre-reviewed ARR) #NLProc #CompSocialSci #ComputationalSocialScience #ACL2026NLP @aclmeeting.bsky.social
Here at UMass Amherst CICS, we’re searching for TT faculty in NLP – see the link from www.cics.umass.edu/about/employ... I’m happy to answer questions of course, too!
Faculty Positions
Open tenure-track and teaching faculty positions in computer science and informatics at the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences
cics.umass.edu
re @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com on NSF support for the web www.liberalcurrents.com/marc-andrees... -- the NSF specifically gave $3.7M just for Mosaic www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/... and $4.6M for a related effort www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...
i agree, huge change. also as a reviewer, it used to be other reviewers on a paper were non-anonymous. when i was junior, i found this motivating and conducive to learning & community-building - i might see a review i admired, then learn more about the reviewer's work and their way of thinking.
David Mimno@dmimno.bsky.social · 8mo agoOne thing that has changed: 10-15 years ago as an AC I personally knew 19 out of 20 reviewers for my pool. Now it’s unusual if I recognize one name. That kind of functional, internal anonymity breeds laziness.
Great connections between our linguistics department and the CICS NLP program (including Katrin Erk now in a joint appointment). Also happy to communicate with prospective applicants.
Bbrendan o’connor@brenocon.bsky.social · 8mo ago
Here at UMass Amherst CICS, we’re searching for TT faculty in NLP – see the link from www.cics.umass.edu/about/employ... I’m happy to answer questions of course, too!