Nivii Kalavakonda

We interrupt your doomscroll to remind you that public media always plays music free of charge – and free of algorithmic involvement.

Though NPR has lost federal funding, we're committed to keep bringing you the arts because it is core to our mission.

To stand with us, donate here: n.pr/47jpe4d

As Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) grows in number of submissions, we are looking for more reviewers and action editors. Please sign up!

Only one paper to review at a time and <= 6 per year, reviewers report greater satisfaction than reviewing for conferences!

zeldawilliams 20m From Create Mode •• Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want. To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough, , just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

🤣🤣🤣

Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social) has written a thread on Mastodon about the impact of the federal grant freeze to UCLA, particularly to his own field of Mathematics. UCLA's IPAM (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) could shut down entirely

mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1149568...

US senators poised to reject Trump’s proposed massive science cuts Committee gives first hint that policymakers might preserve, rather than slash, funding for US National Science Foundation and other agencies.

There may be some tiny opening to save the NSF funding. It is worth calling your Senators. This is a big deal if it can be saved.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My new book Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach is available for pre-order ($40) over at Oxford University Press. The book explores what scholars and society can do about emerging technology. global.oup.com/academic/pro... (new link)

Join us this Wednesday to hear from Brittany Cates on Modeling lies and deception in artificial agents... Registration link for zoom details available below

Hello! I and some colleagues are running a @blackinrobotics.bsky.social virtual workshop on July 13th where participants learn basic computer programming by writing code to move a robot arm!

Sign-up at www.eventbrite.com/e/beginning-...

#stemeducation #Robotics #python #coding

Catch Emile Kroeger discuss about social robots in the wild at Talking Robotics #83 tomorrow!
📅 Schedule: Jun 25 | 09:00 EDT | 12:00 EST | 18:00 CEST
💻 Zoom - free registration required: bit.ly/talkingrobot...
📄Details: talking-robotics.github.io/talks/emile_...

#robotics #socialrobots #AI

We have Maria Pozzi from University of Siena joining us on June 11th for Talking Robotics #82. Join us to hear more about her research on soft robotics and manipulation. Register (free) for zoom info at the link below

Tools to Take Action

9/ 🚨🚨🚨 CALL TO ACTION

Call your elective representatives to tell them how these draconian cuts will directly harm (as applicable):

your state
your local communities
your trainees
yourself

See the #SaveNSF website for some inspiration:

www.savensf.com/take-action

Join us next week to hear Ravi's talk on Influence-Aware safety. Register at the link below.

CIP accepting applications for Community Fellowship 2025-26 cohort The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public is accepting applications for the CIP Community Fellowship program’s 2025-26 cohort through June 20.

Call for community fellows at the Center for an Informed Public www.cip.uw.edu/2025/05/27/c...

Accepted Papers | Robotics: Science and Systems RSS 2025, June 21, 2025 - June 25, 2025, Los Angeles, California

📢 Check out the list of accepted papers for Robotics: Science and Systems 2025: roboticsconference.org/program/pape...

📜 You can also find the complete conference program here: roboticsconference.org/program/over...

🌴 We look forward to seeing you at #RSS2025 in Los Angeles June 21st-25th!

🚨 It’s baaaack! 5 yrs strong, the Black in Robotics Summer Workshop Series is 🔥
Dive into hands-on Zoom sessions on #AI, #Python, #Drones, #Robotics & more 💥
Led by dope experts. Free. Fun. Future-focused.
🎯 Sign up: black-in-robotics.eventbrite.com
#BlackInRobotics 🚀

My ongoing request:

If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.

NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...

NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...

Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

Talk abstract and speaker bio: talking-robotics.github.io/talks/qianhu...

@talkingrobotics.bsky.social

Talking Robotics #80: Qianhui Men, Univ. of Bristol

🤖Title: Multimodal AI for Healthcare Decision-Making: Integrating Visual and Motion Guidance in Fetal Ultrasound Navigation
📅 14 May'25 (Tomorrow) - 09 AM PDT
💻 Register for Zoom link: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

@talkingrobotics.bsky.social

You count on the NPR Network. THANK YOU to our supporters who are showing we can count on you too.

If you haven’t given yet, it’s time to join the movement to defend public media.

Donate now: n.pr/3EYClNR

A chocolate cake with red and white decorations and lit candles shaped as the number 75. Bold text reads: ‘The NSF Turns 75 Today. What has it done over the past 7 decades?’ The background is a celebratory red with a spray-paint texture.

HAPPY 75th, NSF!

We’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of NSF’s most transformative accomplishments—innovations that have shaped our world and continue to drive progress in health, technology, the environment, and beyond.

Read on 🧵(1/11):

Last seminars before the summer break:

04/29: Max Simchowitz (CMU)
05/06: Jeongyeol Kwon (Univ. of Widsconsin-Madison)
05/20: Sikata Sengupta & Marcel Hussing (Univ. of Pennsylvania)
05/27: Dhruv Rohatgi (MIT)
06/03: David Janz (Univ. of Oxford)
06/10: Nneka Okolo (MIT)

Sycophancy and the art of the model GPT-4o-simp, LMArena backlash, and people refusing to understand how messy and crucial RLHF is.

A couple years of weekly analysis, frontier research, and writing a small book on RLHF was pretty much a long winded lead up to writing this blog post. If nothing else, read it as a favor to me.

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

FYI: The Spencer Foundation, Kapor Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have collaborated to offer $25K rapid response grants.

"This rapid response bridge funding opportunity is for scholars and teams whose grants have recently been cancelled by NSF."

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature.

https://go.nature.com/44Ugf9V

Talking Robotics Session #79: Join us tomorrow to hear
@jonarriza96.bsky.social's talk about Egocentric Decision-Making for Robot Autonomy

⏲️: 30 Apr 2025 - 09:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT
✍️ Register for zoom link: bit.ly/3GotJRc
🤖Talk Abstract: bit.ly/3GjMyVI

@talkingrobotics.bsky.social

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm.

Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

Call For Creative AI 2025

The NeurIPS 2025 Creative AI Track is now inviting research papers and artworks that explore cutting edge applications of AI and ML in art, design, and creative practice. This year, we welcome submissions on the theme of "Humanity".

Read more:
neurips.cc/Conferences/...

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

Well the NIH has cancelled the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of women in history

It has been running continuously since 1991 and has provided massive key knowledge about diseases in women

Unreal

www.science.org/content/arti...