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Catherine Lai

@catlai.bsky.social

Lecturer in speech and language technology, CSTR, University of Edinburgh. She/her. https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/clai/

0 Posts3133 Follower404 Folgt
Nicole Bedera@nbedera.bsky.social · last wk.

Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.

Dr Vanessa@hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 2w ago

Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*

John Stott@jpsastro.bsky.social · 2w ago

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful. Review process As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it. Feedback on your application Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
Alice Ross@alice-ross.bsky.social · 3w ago

@scariadna.bsky.social is off to Sydney this week to present this work 🛫🐨🗣️ @interspeech.bsky.social goers, do not miss the queer & trans speech science and technology session! wish I could be there for that and @steven-bird.bsky.social keynote 🥹

Alice Ross@alice-ross.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Proud to present the preprint of our @interspeech.bsky.social accepted paper: exploring the personas invoked by "flirty" and "temptress" (Elevenlabs' labels, not ours!) AI voices with @scariadna.bsky.social @elinkanhov.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social and Éva Székely 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2606.21366

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3w ago

'student representatives have described the proposal as “tone-deaf”, highlighting that two-thirds of undergraduates are now in term-time employment and describing an expectation for them to take on additional labour as “absolutely ridiculous”.'

Paid employment ‘biggest barrier’ to rolling out work placements

Survey comes after vice-chancellors said they wanted every undergraduate in England to undertake work experience as part of their degree

timeshighereducation.com

Emma Yeomans@yeomans.bsky.social · 3w ago

Worrying scenes in the Channel today, for all interested in asylum policy and maritime tactics. A small boat from Normandy spent more than 30 hours at sea. Those on board now on their 2nd rescue vessel as Border Force forced to play cat and mouse with far-right activists who have their own boat.

Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 3w ago

“our ai broke out and hacked some organisations” = "we failed to set up appropriate safeguards, failed to continuously monitor our experiments, and ignored a basic principle of reinforcement learning: if hacking gets rewarded, the system learns to hack"

Pavel Iosad@anghyflawn.net · 3w ago

A further observation: the response to the news is widespread horror and solidarity (which we’re grateful for), but it’s also really interesting to observe the gap between how this looks like from ‘the inside’ vs the outside.

Pavel Iosad@anghyflawn.net · 3w ago

Among the degrees that have been cut at Edinburgh are Persian Studies (and Persian and Middle Eastern Studies), and Africa and International Development. If only there was any need for specialists in any of these areas in the current state of affairs.

Melissa Terras@melissaterras.bsky.social · 3w ago

Apropos of nothing: it would be normal at a modern, responsive uni to offer new courses and deprecate others regularly. But a mass shuttering of courses suggests senior managers haven’t had their eye on the ball when they should have, for quite some time. 😒 Planning? Governance? Accountability?

Christian Ilbury@christianilbury.bsky.social · 3w ago

Super excited to share our new article which is *finally* out in Journal of Applied Linguistics, 'Tackling linguistic discrimination in higher education' which is co-authored with former students Grace Mai Clark (93% Club) and Shanley Breese (Scottish Society). academic.oup.com/applij/advan...

Tackling linguistic discrimination in higher education: a student-staff collaborative approach

Abstract. The field has long been committed to critically exploring the role of language in systemic inequality and social injustice. More recently, a grow

academic.oup.com

Rachel Rees@rachel-rees.bsky.social · last mo.

As honoured as I am to see that The Times has picked up my Chagos article practically *word for word*, including my hard-gotten quotes, I’d prefer some credit — or for everyone to read my original FT piece! free link to read the evidently enviable article below (cheaper than a Times sub!) 🌴

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Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is egregious BBC bullshit. It’s not only “academics of colour” who know (vs. ‘feel’) that the ferocity of the attacks were due to Arday being Black. Academic dishonesty must have consequences. Tell that to the white academic fakers still with jobs at leading unis who’ve faced nothing like this

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Shiro Sirius@shirosiri.us · 2mo ago

I don’t want to be too sensationalist about this but also I’m the least violent person in the world and I think if someone said this to my face I’d hit them

"A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information," it continues. "Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an Al model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one."
Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele@drdragases.bsky.social · 2mo ago

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Earlier this year UKRI launched a funding call to invest £40M in ONE AI lab. www.ukri.org/opportunity/... For some unknown reason they decided to fund TWO AI labs at the cost of £60M. An extra £20M. Just found. That's the equivalent of 7 more years of Jodrell Bank. www.ukri.org/news/ukri-la...

UKRI launches two AI research labs to stay ahead in global race

Two new labs will back British researchers to develop next generation artificial intelligence (AI) systems, helping secure the UK’s position as a global leader.

ukri.org

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Pavel Iosad@anghyflawn.net · 3mo ago

So this Defence Universities Alliance thing… we do actually need defence capacity but it’s a bit insane that somehow the defence sector still has nothing to do with languages, area studies, history and suchlike. Complete loss of institutional memory. This used to be widely recognised!

Chosen from almost 100 applicants, founding members of the DUA will strengthen connections between academia and the defence sector, helping to support a pipeline of skilled graduates into exciting careers, including cyber security, robotics, Al, aerospace engineering and advanced manufacturing. In doing so, the initiative will ensure young people leave university ready for work, with a bridge between study and employment.
Sarah Murphy@13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Would Jenrick also like to explain how £5Mill Farage hawking gold bullion and grifting for crypto and fossil fuel billionaires while pledging to scrap the Equality Act, bin new employment rights and lower the minimum wage is not working for the super rich, against the interests of the rest of us?

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Conservatives are for "the super rich" says Robert Jenrick, whose own campaigns have been funded by a billionaire Israeli mining heir and a firm controlled by a sanctioned oligarch