Jason Hartford
@jhartford.bsky.social
DKO fellow (Assistant Prof equiv.) at University of Manchester. Causality Research Unit Lead at Valence Labs / Recursion Pharma. Prev: postdoc at Mila with Prof Yoshua Bengio, PhD at UBC. South African 🇿🇦
Ready to bike along the canals? 🚲 The 42nd Conference on Uncertainty in AI will be in Amsterdam, August 17-21! 🇳🇱 CfP is out 👉 auai.org/uai2026/call... 🚨 Feb 25: Paper submission 🗣️ Apr 23–May 2: rebuttal period 🎉💀 Jun 1: Author notification #UAI2026 #ML #stats #learning #reasoning #uncertainty #AI
UAI call for papers is out now 🇳🇱
Ready to bike along the canals? 🚲 The 42nd Conference on Uncertainty in AI will be in Amsterdam, August 17-21! 🇳🇱 CfP is out 👉 auai.org/uai2026/call... 🚨 Feb 25: Paper submission 🗣️ Apr 23–May 2: rebuttal period 🎉💀 Jun 1: Author notification #UAI2026 #ML #stats #learning #reasoning #uncertainty #AI
Thanks to @jhartford.bsky.social for two talks during the first week of our @raeng.org.uk internship programme! #aifunmanchester
I’m excited to have our perspective on virtual cells out.
1/ At Valence Labs, @recursionpharma.bsky.social's AI research engine, we’re focused on advancing drug discovery outcomes through cutting-edge computational methods Today, we're excited to share our vision for building virtual cells, guided by the predict-explain-discover framework 🧵
This is very worth reading to see just how hard AI safety is going to be as these systems continue to get more powerful. The AI safety community has long emphasized how hard reward specification is: here’s a real world instance of a paper clip maximizers. openai.com/index/expand...
Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy
A deeper dive on our findings, what went wrong, and future changes we’re making.
openai.com
I’m very excited for this workshop on Generative AI for Biology workshop that we’re hosting at UCL in London. It hybrid so you can attend virtually or in person (limited spots so reach out).
Hybrid workshop on Generative AI for Biology with great speakers including Sarah Teichmann, @bunnech.bsky.social, Francesco Di Giovanni, Diego Oyarzun, Jussi Taipale, @jhartford.bsky.social, Chris Barnes and Marta Milo. Link for online registration www.genai.ac.uk/news-feed/ce...
Excited to share that our work on ''Inference Set Design for Biological Data'' @valenceai.bsky.social was accepted at ICLR25! 🚀 The paper is available now on arXiv, and we're looking forward to share and discuss the potential of active learning in AI for drug discovery this April in Singapore! 🧬 📊
I’m super excited that Learning Meaningful Representations of Life is back for ICLR 2025. We have a fantastic group of speakers lined up and there’s never been a better time to think about what makes a “meaningful” representation and how to learn one. Consider submitting!
Exciting news! 🚀 The Learning Meaningful Representations of Life ( #LMRL 🌟) workshop is returning at #ICLR2025! 🎉 On 27th / 28th April 2025 in Singapore 🇸🇬, this popular event returns with a fresh organizing team 👇 & bold new ideas 🧠 to explore bridging AI & life sciences 🧬
Finishing off NeurIPS right: a swim at Jericho Beach. Air temp: 5°C, water temp: 6°C. A very effective way of icing a broken ankle.
I’ll be at NeurIPS next week (hobbling around on crutches with a broken fibula). Reach out if you’d like to talk causal representation learning / virtual cells / active learning. Also - I’m looking for phd students, so if you’re applying for phds in these areas, reach out !
Excited to be at the causality in healthcare at Manchester workshop.
Last call for applications! @valenceai.bsky.social @jhartford.bsky.social
⚡ML internship opportunity⚡ 💡 Interested in controllable generative models (esp. diffusion)? 👨🍳 Curious to see what they can do for real-world problems at scale? 🌍 Excited by a Virtual Cell, simulating how cells respond to drugs? Join us in London: job-boards.greenhouse.io/valencelabs/...
We're hiring two interns and a full time post in the Valence labs London office. If you're interested in causal inference / generative models / latent variable inference and how to use these ideas to impact real world drug discovery programs, consider applying: job-boards.greenhouse.io/valencelabs
Jobs at Valence Labs
job-boards.greenhouse.io
⚡ML internship opportunity⚡ 💡 Interested in controllable generative models (esp. diffusion)? 👨🍳 Curious to see what they can do for real-world problems at scale? 🌍 Excited by a Virtual Cell, simulating how cells respond to drugs? Join us in London: job-boards.greenhouse.io/valencelabs/...