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Oliver Lemon

@oliverlemon.bsky.social

Prof in CS; Academic Lead of National Robotarium; ELLIS Fellow; Edinburgh Centre for Robotics; Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh. Postdocs at Stanford and Edinburgh. Research in NLP, dialogue, conversational AI, multimodality, robots, embodied AI, collaborative AI

900 Followers  |  760 Following  |  35 Posts  |  Joined: 13.11.2024  |  1.6813

Latest posts by oliverlemon.bsky.social on Bluesky

Generating Robot Constitutions & Benchmarks for Semantic Safety Until recently, robotics safety research was predominantly about collision avoidance and hazard reduction in the immediate vicinity of a robot. Since the advent of large vision and language models (VL...

You might be interested in the ASIMOV benchmark: Generating Robot Constitutions & Benchmarks for Semantic Safety share.google/4gVRpGHdoDb9...

04.12.2025 12:26 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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πŸ“’ PhD & postdoc call for start in autumn 2026 πŸ“’
Join a new interdisciplinary project on Human-Centered Explainable LLMs @copenlu.bsky.social @aicentre.dk
⏳ 1 Feb 2026
ℹ️ www.copenlu.com/news/funded-...
πŸ—’οΈ employment.ku.dk/phd/?show=15... (PhD); employment.ku.dk/faculty/?sho... (Postdoc)

25.11.2025 08:09 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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πŸŽ‰ New work: β€œLearning Massively Multitask World Models for Continuous Control”

We introduce MMBench: a 200-task RL benchmark, and Newt: a language-conditioned multitask world model trained with large-scale online RL.

www.nicklashansen.com/NewtWM/

Code, checkpoints, dataset etc. are open-source!

25.11.2025 19:47 β€” πŸ‘ 29    πŸ” 9    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
6-panel SMBC comic update where a person asks a robot who is the background, cleaning, if they have achieved consciousness. The robot says "Nah - consciousness requires a reflective inner experience, unified persistent sense of self hood, and an intrinsic set of goals." The robots adds that an ai has no existence as it is, it just tries to meet the needs of the hour rather than eternally striving upward. This gives the human pause, and then reply "aw man, did you already attain total spiritual enlightenment?" The robot replies with "Namu amida butsu" a Japanese Buddhist chant.

6-panel SMBC comic update where a person asks a robot who is the background, cleaning, if they have achieved consciousness. The robot says "Nah - consciousness requires a reflective inner experience, unified persistent sense of self hood, and an intrinsic set of goals." The robots adds that an ai has no existence as it is, it just tries to meet the needs of the hour rather than eternally striving upward. This gives the human pause, and then reply "aw man, did you already attain total spiritual enlightenment?" The robot replies with "Namu amida butsu" a Japanese Buddhist chant.

The worst part of selfless robotic servants is going to be how happy they are.

COMIC β—† www.smbc-comics.com/comic/consci...
PATREON β—† www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm...
STORE β—† smbc-store.myshopify.com

16.11.2025 23:30 β€” πŸ‘ 183    πŸ” 38    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 1

Important

14.11.2025 18:35 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Our final SPRING Project paper has just been published in the International Journal of Social Robotics! πŸŽ‰

πŸ“„ Socially Pertinent Robots in Gerontological Healthcare

We explore how hospital patients and our robot Ari can engage in natural, useful conversations

πŸ”— link.springer.com/article/10.1...

08.11.2025 11:23 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Great idea, and increasingly important to do this work.

27.10.2025 07:33 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Eating less/no animal products (especially beef), composting food waste, and demanding your community quickly transition away from fossil fuels are great ways to reduce methane emissions β€” and therefore help coral reefs because not all hope is lost!!

16.10.2025 16:39 β€” πŸ‘ 303    πŸ” 97    πŸ’¬ 8    πŸ“Œ 5

Think your LLMs β€œunderstand” words like although/but/therefore? Think again!

They perform at chance for making inferences from certain discourse connectives expressing concession

16.10.2025 17:02 β€” πŸ‘ 19    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Open PhD position in embodied AI, Edinburgh - applications closing soon!

16.10.2025 07:49 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

PhD positions in AI/Robotics/NLP -- deadline Friday, 14 November 2025 ! Edinburgh, Scotland πŸ€–πŸ—£οΈ -- please share!
www.cdt-d2air.uk

03.10.2025 12:55 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Applying to CDT-D2AIR | Edinburgh Centre for Robotics We are now accepting applications for the September 2025 cohort in the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics (CDT-D2AIR), a 4-year PhD programme jointly off...

Looking to do PhD in AI? Our CDT program AI for Robotics (CDT-D2AIR) offers funding & a supportive research environment -- september 2025 intake now open!
#GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML #PhD @heriotwattuni.bsky.social
Learn more & apply here: www.edinburgh-robotics.org/apply

27.01.2025 09:21 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 8    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 2
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Why iRobot’s founder won’t go within 10 feet of today’s walking robots Rodney Brooks says humanoid robots pose hidden safety challenges and won’t learn dexterity from video alone.
02.10.2025 21:11 β€” πŸ‘ 44    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 2
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πŸš€ Shape the future of European AI! The @ellis.eu PhD Programme is opening for applications.

🧠 Work with top researchers, join joint supervision 🀝 and benefit from networking 🌐 & training πŸŽ“

Info session: Oct 1, 16:00 CET.

Everything you need to know is one click away πŸ‘‰ ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...

24.09.2025 06:34 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Models Generalist robots that can perform a range of different tasks in open-world settings must be able to not only reason about the steps needed to accomplish their goals, but also process complex instruct...

This week's #PaperILike is "Hi Robot: Open-Ended Instruction Following with Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Models" (Shi et al., ICML 2025).

I'm often asked: how might we combine ideas from hierarchical planning and VLAs? This is a good start!

PDF: arxiv.org/abs/2502.19417

14.09.2025 15:37 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

PhD position available ! - Generative AI for Embodied Collaborative Agents (eg. robots :) - Please distribute

14.08.2025 14:53 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

"Learnings" and "advancements", both common in AI papers

04.08.2025 07:14 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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The Interaction Lab - PhD position in Embodied AI PhD Position: Multimodal Generative AI for Embodied Collaborative Agents Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom, Interaction Lab and National Robotarium , Heriot-Watt University Collaboration with Toshib...

PhD position in Generative AI for Embodied Collaborative Agents: #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML #PhD @heriotwattuni.bsky.social - please contact me ASAP if you are interested !
sites.google.com/site/hwinter...

18.06.2025 15:54 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

Full Professor position in AI/CS -- Deadline for applications 23rd June!

16.06.2025 09:38 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Prof position in CA/ AI -- Apply here ! www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/42...

30.05.2025 12:36 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
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The regular submission deadline for SIGdial 2025 has now passed...

But we are still welcoming submissions through ACL Rolling Review πŸŽ‰

ARR Commitment Deadline: June 6th

Acceptance notifications will be on June 20th, and then SIGdial will be held in Avignon, France: August 25th - 27th

02.06.2025 21:07 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Playpen: An Environment for Exploring Learning Through Conversational Interaction Interaction between learner and feedback-giver has come into focus recently for post-training of Large Language Models (LLMs), through the use of reward models that judge the appropriateness of a mode...

Oh yes, here's the link to the actual pre-print: arxiv.org/abs/2504.08590

29.05.2025 20:40 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Title of the paper, with a colourful "playpen" logo

Title of the paper, with a colourful "playpen" logo

🚨 New pre-print! (Well, new & much improved version in any case.) 🚨
If you're interested in LLM post-training techniques and in how to make LLMs better "language users", read this thread, introducing the "LM Playpen".

29.05.2025 20:40 β€” πŸ‘ 14    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0

Prof position in CA/ AI -- Apply here ! www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/42...

30.05.2025 12:36 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
Chair of Artificial Intelligence An exciting opportunity to join the Department of Computer Science during an exciting period of growth as our Chair of Artificial Intelligence. Our campus is home to the National Robotarium, a world-l...

Job advert! Chair (full professor) in AI at Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML @heriotwattuni.bsky.social
Learn more & apply here: enzj.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

20.05.2025 17:12 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 2

All aspects of AI are in scope, including NLP, multimodality, embodied AI... DM me with questions!

24.05.2025 14:32 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Chair of Artificial Intelligence An exciting opportunity to join the Department of Computer Science during an exciting period of growth as our Chair of Artificial Intelligence. Our campus is home to the National Robotarium, a world-l...

Job advert! Chair (full professor) in AI at Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML @heriotwattuni.bsky.social
Learn more & apply here: enzj.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

20.05.2025 17:12 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 2
Assistant Professor - Computer Sciences You will join the School of Mathematical & Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. The department of Computer Science within the School is internationally renowned for its ...

We are hiring ! new faculty positions in AI, NLP, interactive robotics #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML @heriotwattuni.bsky.social enzj.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

10.04.2025 13:44 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Research Themes - The National Robotarium The National Robotarium is home to a diverse range of expertise in robotics and Artificial Intelligence.Researchers from Heriot-Watt University and The University of Edinburgh work across the followin...

In a nutshell β€” here’s what we are working on at Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and the National Robotarium - our Research Themes @heriotwattuni.bsky.social #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML #PhD thenationalrobotarium.com/research-the...

06.05.2025 13:55 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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The Interaction Lab - PhD position in Embodied AI PhD Position: Multimodal Generative AI for Embodied Collaborative Agents Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom, Interaction Lab and National Robotarium , Heriot-Watt University Collaboration with Toshib...

New - PhD position in Generative AI for Embodied Collaborative Agents: #GenAI #NLProc #HRI #ELLISforEurope #AI #ML #PhD @heriotwattuni.bsky.social
sites.google.com/site/hwinter...

15.04.2025 11:42 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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