Harrison Pim

This will be my first time at ACL, and I’m very excited about the opportunity to meet and catch up with other folks doing work at the frontiers of NLP research :) drop me a message if you’re around!

I’ll be talking about the knowledge graph that we’re building at @climatepolicyradar.bsky.social - By weaving together the connections between policy documents from all over the world, we’re hoping to make them easier to explore, understand, and explain

I’m on my way to Vienna for @aclmeeting.bsky.social, where I’ll be giving a keynote for the @climate-nlp.bsky.social workshop on how NLP is being used to address the climate crisis

Toolmen Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool.

But in this, @aworkinglibrary.com gets straight at the bit which really does worry me.

"AI", not as a technology, but as an ideology, is being used as a prop in the revival of scientific racism, and old, eugenicist hierarchies of intelligence.

It's a very good essay

So much of the recent AI doomerism (environmental, economic, existential, etc) has felt dumb to me... The criticisms seem reactionary, sensationalist, poorly researched, wilfully blind. Anyone with direct experience knows that the reality of the technology is much more mundane than the hype

Some thoughts on how "LLM grooming" could be used to fill information voids and thus further degrade information found on the web. Happy times!
dcorney.com/thoughts/202...

As datacenter production gets automated, the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity. (People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.)

Sam Altman just gave ChatGPT's cost-per-query of 0.34 watt-hours: the first time a number has been given in terms of recent LLM power usage and is obviously much lower than the 3 watts still cited by detractors, but there's a lot of asterisks in how that number might be calculated.

The Biggest Statistic About AI Water Use Is A Lie How did it become the main story?

The most well-known statistic about AI water use is a lie. This makes it frustrating to talk about AI and the environment, and this is a long deep dive on that specific point.

www.verysane.ai/p/the-bigges...

the tone's provocative, but there are loads of sensible, software-development-centric takes about LLM hype vs reality in here

I’ve had such a brilliant weekend at @pydatalondon.bsky.social. So many great presentations, so many great chats with pals old and new. Really feeling the value of the data science community which has grown and cohered here over the last decade. Massive, massive thanks to the organisers 💖

oh my GOD i love pydata events so much. so happy to be back in these spaces with these people

All the ways I want the AI debate to be better A lot of rules and ideas for talking about AI

I wrote what turned into a small book with all my big takes on AI and the ways I'd like to see the debate improve
andymasley.substack.com/p/all-the-wa...

AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms New AI agent evolves algorithms for math and practical applications in computing by combining the creativity of large language models with automated evaluators

Deepmind have been doing amaaaaazing things ✨
deepmind.google/discover/blo...

Access to accurate information is not a luxury, it is the foundation of our democracy. We cannot let large online platforms which wield so much influence over our daily lives walk away from commitments to make our online world a safer place. Government and regulators must hold them to account, to the full extent of the law. This is no time for half measures.

Today we launch our report on the rising threat of misinformation in the UK—featuring expert essays and a new rating system assessing policy, platforms, and progress in tackling false information online.

Read it here: buff.ly/Uz6pzTJ

IMO the more interesting question is whether this sort of tarpit could be used to maliciously steer LLM training, beyond just adding noise. given a large/subtle enough maze, can a more pointed set of disinformation be baked into LLMs' circuits?

not sure one can effectively fight slop by generating even-sloppier-slop

these tarpits are fun/cute/interesting, but also seem quite naive

they deliberately poison the well in the hope of preventing a hypothetical, future well-poisoning by another party... but the well still ends up poisoned, with little regard for what the unintended consequences might be

It's just too easy to make yourself insane with the computer

a woman pointing a rifle at a computer, with her finger on the trigger

HELLO GOOD MORNING I AM GOING ON THE COMPUTER AGAIN

Not too long ago, we were asked when we're going to replace Wikipedia's human-curated knowledge with AI. The answer? We're not. The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the most important and unique element of Wikipedia’s success. For nearly 25 years, Wikipedia editors have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia humankind has ever seen. Their care and commitment to reliable encyclopedic knowledge is something AI cannot replace. That is why our new AI strategy doubles down on the volunteers behind Wikipedia. We will use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia to spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it. Our investments will be focused on specific areas where generative AI excels, all in the service of creating unique opportunities that will boost Wikipedia’s volunteers:

Wikimedia has a new AI strategy!

A colleague and I spent months working on it. I am so happy that it is out. wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/04...

A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment Arm yourself with knowledge

I'm glad somebody out there is brave enough to push back against the "personal ChatGPT usage is terrible for the environment" message andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sh...

I am thinking about Reverend Toller again

I'm excited to see a new round of first time speakers giving talks about weird new stuff this year. With any luck, I’ll be back in 2026 with some even sillier stuff to share 😉

Sentimental, I know, but it feels very meaningful to return to the community that encouraged and legitimised my dumb personal projects years ago, to share everything I've learned in the years since

8 years ago at pydata NYC, I presented a silly side project where I was analysing books to build networks of their characters. I didn’t know it then, but that idea ended up laying the foundation for a huge part of my career since. This year's talk is really a grown-up version of that one from 2017.

After a few years of absence, I'll be back at @pydatalondon.bsky.social this year to talk about how we built a knowledge graph for climate policy at @climatepolicyradar.bsky.social

It’s reassuring to have such a straightforward message on safety coming from the head of one of the most powerful LLM labs, which coherently weaves together their research and product strategies. Hope they manage to pull it off!

Dario Amodei — The Urgency of Interpretability

Hell yeah, it sounds like anthropic are really going to push to differentiate themselves from their competitors on the strength of their mechanistic interpretability work

Me and the @climatepolicyradar.bsky.social knowledge graph are coming to @berlinbuzzwords.de this June!
I had a great time in Berlin as an attendee last summer, and I'm very excited about returning as a speaker this year - If you're around, come and say hi 👋