Alexandra Olteanu

A staircase in the new School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences building at Wisconsin Madison. Tan wood structures surround tapestry art and a small indoor garden.

A view from above of the staircases in the Wisconsin CDIS building

An shot from below of winding wooden staircases and a glass atrium rooftop. The new School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences building at Wisconsin Madison.

A bicolor white cat with seal-colored markings, looking upwards with big wide dark eyes.

It's the season for PhD apps!! 🥧 🦃 ☃️ ❄️

Apply to Wisconsin CS to research
- Societal impact of AI
- NLP ←→ CSS and cultural analytics
- Computational sociolinguistics
- Human-AI interaction
- Culturally competent and inclusive NLP
with me!

lucy3.github.io/prospective-...

Snow on the balcony

Unexpected (amount of) snow day

Rigor in AI: Doing Rigorous AI Work Requires a Broader, Responsible AI-Informed Conception of Rigor In AI research and practice, rigor remains largely understood in terms of methodological rigor -- such as whether mathematical, statistical, or computational methods are correctly applied. We argue th...

Our forthcoming NeurIPS position paper, led by @aolteanu.bsky.social, makes this argument (along with several related ones) in more depth. Rigorous AI/ML work should flow from explicit and rigorous premises, not just have a final evaluation that checks some rigor boxes. arxiv.org/abs/2506.14652

I wish folks would use more precise terminology than "AI sycophancy." Not all validating behaviours/interactions are sycophantic. By definition, for them to be sycophantic there needs to be an underlying intention to e.g., gain advantage or favour. Intention is something AI systems do not have.

Love this analogy

Perhaps not as much about how real is or is not, but this is a paper that substantially shaped my views on this topic (I have also been surprised at times about how different folks' conceptualizations of reproducibility can be) cs.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/cour...

As we prepare the camera-ready version of this paper, I am also reflecting on how to make this work handier and more useful: rigor cards to make the different facets of rigor easier to grasp? workshops to provide a forum for discussion and debates? something else that would be helpful to you?

This was accepted to #NeurIPS 🎉🎊

TL;DR Impoverished notions of rigor can have a formative impact on AI work. We argue for a broader conception of what rigorous work should entail & go beyond methodological issues to include epistemic, normative, conceptual, reporting & interpretative considerations

Rigor in AI: Doing Rigorous AI Work Requires a Broader, Responsible AI-Informed Conception of Rigor In AI research and practice, rigor remains largely understood in terms of methodological rigor -- such as whether mathematical, statistical, or computational methods are correctly applied. We argue th...

"Epistemic rigor, however, does not necessarily require specific epistemological commitments or choices but rather that those commitments and choices be made explicit."

www.arxiv.org/abs/2506.14652

Not sure if it has what you need or if they are still collecting but this might be worth checking out archive.org/details/twit...

Listening to a workshop panel at #acl2025 I am realizing that we are saying more or less the same things and having more or less the same conversations for so many years

#acl2025 I think there is plenty of evidence for the risks of anthropomorphic AI behavior and design (re: keynote) -- find @myra.bsky.social and I if you want to chat more about this or our "Dehumanizing Machines" ACL 2025 paper

In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.

Who is attending @aclmeeting.bsky.social in Vienna? Reach out or find me there if you want to chat! #acl2025nlp

My university has announced a fund to essentially poach doctoral students from US institutions. DM me if you do work on the history/social impacts of AI and are interested in being poached 😂

Not sure who needs to hear this but what people want AI systems to do, what AI systems do, and what people believe AI systems do are not the same thing. Just because one wants or believes AI systems do or can do certain things, doesn't mean they actually do those things.

If you're at @icmlconf.bsky.social this week, come check out our poster on "Position: Evaluating Generative AI Systems Is a Social Science Measurement Challenge" presented by the amazing @afedercooper.bsky.social from 11:30am--1:30pm PDT on Weds!!! icml.cc/virtual/2025...

Do you have strong programming skills but need research experience doing meaningful & exciting CSS projects before heading off to a top graduate school for computational social science PhD? Apply now to predoc with me,
@dggoldst.bsky.social @jakehofman.bsky.social www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

tiny but perhaps in their defense Cailler is probably the best chocolate in the world 🍫

Someone asked me today how to get better at scientific writing. I'm not the best person to ask because I find my own writing very inadequate! But the tips I thought of were:

1. Practice, and practice with co-authors who are better writers than you. Observe how they make edits and copy them.

(1/n)

Congrats Koustuv! So well deserved! ❤️

I think the community's ability to look inwards and be self-critical is part of what makes it special, and this is something I believe is important to preserve even when there is disagreement on how to do things or perhaps just different theories of change #facct2025

FAccT is such a special community & many of us have invested a lot of service time/effort to support it over the years. I do believe engaging with uncomfortable questions & dialogue is important even when there is criticism (which can be hard to hear, can feel unfair/demotivating & sucks) #facct2025

Flattered and shocked for our paper to receive the #facct2025 best paper award.

Two years after the craft session on theories of change in responsible AI, I am glad to see this discussion taking central stage as a keynote panel #facct2025

There is a lot of talk and effort to figure out how genAI is different (I am also guilty of this!) -- the reality is that genAI is not that different and genAI is not that new either; it was hard to evaluate in the past, and it is still as hard to evaluate now #facct2025

Your #FAccT2025 General Chairs @sciorestis.bsky.social, @metaxa.net, and I, reporting from the venue.

We're looking forward to welcoming you to the Athens Conservatoire or online!

That would be awesome! See you soon!

Looking forward to seeing you this week!