I'm in Rabat, Morocco attending #EACL2026 and enjoying tea! I will present our recent work – comparing how new words emerge in books/articles and on social media – at the LChange workshop: aclanthology.org/2026.lchange...

The must-read paper on LLMs, language, and thought that I reference here: Dissociating language and thought in large language models arxiv.org/abs/2301.06627 by @kmahowald.bsky.social @neuranna.bsky.social Idan Blank @nancykanwisher.bsky.social @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social

Dissociating language and thought in large language models

Large Language Models (LLMs) have come closest among all models to date to mastering human language, yet opinions about their linguistic and cognitive capabilities remain split. Here, we evaluate LLMs...

arxiv.org

Women in AI Research - WiAIR@wiair.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Do LLMs really understand or are we mistaking language for thought? In the next #WiAIRpodcast episode, @mryskina.bsky.social explores language vs. thought in LLMs, what AI can learn from cognitive science, and why model internals matter. Full conversation coming soon. youtu.be/1N-Cdts6Y7k

Huge thanks to @wiair.bsky.social for hosting me -- I had an absolutely wonderful time chatting with @j-novikova-nlp.bsky.social and @malikeh97.bsky.social 🤩

Women in AI Research - WiAIR@wiair.bsky.social · 7mo ago

What does neuroscience say about how language models represent meaning, and why isn't scale enough? In this #WiAIRpodcast episode, we speak with @mryskina.bsky.social on neuroscience × AI, evaluation limits, interpretability, and why community shapes better research. 🎬 youtu.be/PQx4IvJR8Bg

New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press. This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website: tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...

Hiring a postdoc for the Normativity Lab at Johns Hopkins (2026 start). Looking for multiagent systems expertise (RL/generative agents) + interdisciplinary background in AI and cognitive science/econ/cultural evolution. apply.interfolio.com/177701

🧑‍🔬I’m recruiting PhD students in Natural Language Processing @unileipzig.bsky.social Computer Science, together with @scadsai.bsky.social! Topics include, but aren’t limited to: 🔎Linguistic Interpretability 🌍Multilingual Evaluation 📖Computational Typology Please share! #NLProc #NLP

Accidental bibliography achievement unlocked! (I highly recommend checking out both papers)

The recording of my keynote from #COLM2025 is now available!

Gillian Hadfield - Alignment is social: lessons from human alignment for AI

Current approaches conceptualize the alignment challenge as one of eliciting individual human preferences and training models to choose outputs that that satisfy those preferences. To the extent…

youtube.com

the only kind of Rat Race I'm down for

Canadian researchers should be aware the there is a motion before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research to force Tricouncils to hand over disaggregated peer review data on all applications: Applicant names, profiles, demographics Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores

Finally out in TACL: 🌎EWoK (Elements of World Knowledge)🌎: A cognition-inspired framework for evaluating basic world knowledge in language models tl;dr: LLMs learn basic social concepts way easier than physical&spatial concepts Paper: direct.mit.edu/tacl/article... Website: ewok-core.github.io

🚀 Excited to share a major update to our “Mixture of Cognitive Reasoners” (MiCRo) paper! We ask: What benefits can we unlock by designing language models whose inner structure mirrors the brain’s functional specialization? More below 🧠👇 cognitive-reasoners.epfl.ch

I'm on the job market looking for CS/ischool faculty and related positions! I'm broadly interested in doing research with policymakers and communities impacted by AI to inform and develop mitigations to harms and risks. If you've included any of my work in syllabi or policy docs please let me know!

Grateful to keynote at #COLM2025. Here's what we're missing about AI alignment: Humans don’t cooperate just by aggregating preferences, we build social processes and institutions to generate norms that make it safe to trade with strangers. AI needs to play by these same systems, not replace them.

Inspired to share some papers that I found at #COLM2025! "Register Always Matters: Analysis of LLM Pretraining Data Through the Lens of Language Variation" by Amanda Myntti et al. arxiv.org/abs/2504.01542

Maria Ryskina@mryskina.bsky.social · 10mo ago

⭐ A thread for some cool recent work I learned about at #COLM2025, either from the paper presentations or from the keynotes!

⭐ A thread for some cool recent work I learned about at #COLM2025, either from the paper presentations or from the keynotes!

👀

Phillip Isola@phillipisola.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Over the past year, my lab has been working on fleshing out theory + applications of the Platonic Representation Hypothesis. Today I want to share two new works on this topic: Eliciting higher alignment: arxiv.org/abs/2510.02425 Unpaired learning of unified reps: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08492 1/9

We are launching our Graduate School Application Financial Aid Program (www.queerinai.com/grad-app-aid) for 2025-2026. We’ll give up to $750 per person to LGBTQIA+ STEM scholars applying to graduate programs. Apply at openreview.net/group?id=Que.... 1/5

Keynote at #COLM2025: Nicholas Carlini from Anthropic "Are language models worth it?" Explains that the prior decade of his work on adversarial images, while it taught us a lot, isn't very applied; it's unlikely anyone is actually altering images of cats in scary ways.

Outstanding paper 🏆 1: Fast Controlled Generation from Language Models with Adaptive Weighted Rejection Sampling openreview.net/forum?id=3Bm...

How can an imitative model like an LLM outperform the experts it is trained on? Our new COLM paper outlines three types of transcendence and shows that each one relies on a different aspect of data diversity. arxiv.org/abs/2508.17669

Check out @mryskina.bsky.social's talk and poster at COLM on Tuesday—we present a method to identify 'semantically consistent' brain regions (responding to concepts across modalities) and show that more semantically consistent brain regions are better predicted by LLMs.

Maria Ryskina@mryskina.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Interested in language models, brains, and concepts? Check out our COLM 2025 🔦 Spotlight paper! (And if you’re at COLM, come hear about it on Tuesday – sessions Spotlight 2 & Poster 2)!

Also, if you're at COLM, come to Gillian's keynote and find out what our lab is working on!

Conference on Language Modeling@colmweb.org · 11mo ago

Keynote spotlight #4: the second day of COLM will close with @ghadfield.bsky.social from JHU talking about human society alignment, and lessons for AI alignment

Interested in language models, brains, and concepts? Check out our COLM 2025 🔦 Spotlight paper! (And if you’re at COLM, come hear about it on Tuesday – sessions Spotlight 2 & Poster 2)!

Attending COLM next week in Montreal? 🇨🇦 Join us on Thursday for a 2-part social! ✨ 5:30-6:30 at the conference venue and 7:00-10:00 offsite! 🌈 Sign up here: forms.gle/oiMK3TLP8ZZc...

Hi all, we are organizing this fun affinity workshop at EurIPS in Copenhagen. Feel free to present any of your previously published works before or submit abstracts / mixed-media materials!

Queer in AI@queerinai.com · 11mo ago

Hey everyone! 👋 We're so excited to be organizing a fun Queer in AI Workshop, co-located with EurIPS in Copenhagen on December 5! We are seeking submissions, with a deadline of October 15. #NeurIPS2025

Super super thrilled that HALoGEN, our study of LLM hallucinations and their potential origins in training data, received an ✨Outstanding Paper Award✨ at ACL! Joint work w/i Shrusti Ghela*, David Wadden, and Yejin Choi bsky.app/profile/lash...

Abhilasha Ravichander@lasha.bsky.social · 2y ago

We are launching HALoGEN💡, a way to systematically study *when* and *why* LLMs still hallucinate. New work w/ Shrusti Ghela*, David Wadden, and Yejin Choi 💫 📝 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2501.08292 🚀 Code/Data: github.com/AbhilashaRav... 🌐 Website: halogen-hallucinations.github.io 🧵 [1/n]

Looking forward to attending #cogsci2025 (Jul 29 - Aug 3)! I’m especially excited to meet students who will be applying to PhD programs in Computational Ling/CogSci in the coming cycle. Please reach out if you want to meet up and chat! Email is the best way, but DM also works if you must! quick🧵:

Join Abhilasha's lab, she is an awesome researcher and mentor! I can attest, being her collaborator was great fun 🤩

Abhilasha Ravichander@lasha.bsky.social · last yr.

📣 Life update: Thrilled to announce that I’ll be starting as faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems this Fall! I’ll be recruiting PhD students in the upcoming cycle, as well as research interns throughout the year: lasharavichander.github.io/contact.html

Come join us in Vancouver for our ICML social! (I'll be at ICML July 15-18, any poster/talk recs welcome!)

Queer in AI@queerinai.com · last yr.

1/ 💻 Queer in AI is hosting a social at #ICML2025 in Vancouver on 📅 July 16, and you’re invited! Let’s network, enjoy food and drinks, and celebrate our community. Details below…