Whitney Gegg-Harrison (she/they)

Good news (for me!) my gender bias paper from 2023 still replicates with GPT-5.
Bad news (for everyone!) my gender bias paper from 2023 still replicates with GPT-5.
arxiv.org/pdf/2308.14921
hkotek.com/blog/gender-...

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years.

Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

And then I get home and breathe in whatever got kicked up that day by renovation…this has been a rough summer for me and my busted lungs.

It is definitely suboptimal that the week I’m responsible for Hochstein camp drop-offs and thus need to do this and other extra outdoor walking every day is also a week where the air quality is bad and I need to wear a mask outdoors as well as indoors!

A selfie (dark blonde, white, glasses, wearing a mask because bad air) in front of an outdoor art installation with honeycomb shapes and the word “suboptimal”.

A sign that reads: “Suboptimal Sanctuary” is a functional habitat, nesting chamber, and development site for pollinators. Habitat destruction, deforestation, and pollution have necessitated this invented “nature” — a suboptimal solution to a broader problem not yet outside of our ability to properly remedy.

I’ve walked past this “suboptimal” installation so many times this year (it’s part of my 1k walk from the parking lot to my office), but finally stopped today to read about it.

I feel like every single day I need to post a reminder: if you ask an LLM about itself it DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ITS INNER WORKINGS and WILL NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING ACTUALLY ABOUT ITSELF. It just (as it always does) will make up some plausible sounding answer.

It’s the lack of thought that counts

Isn't joking with their spouse one of the things most people...like to do? Why would I want a robot to do that?

Besides the fact that if you don’t like talking to your wife maybe don’t get married—the labor of social interactions IS the point? Not the end result of having something clever to say. You care about the relationship so you express that with care and work…

Poor kitties! (Good luck with the move!)

A very exasperated-looking tuxedo kitty is laying atop a dishwasher box in front of a partially finished kitchen.

Pocus is very done with kitchen remodeling. Alas, kitchen remodeling is not done with Pocus!

AI and Fraternity, Abeba Birhane, AI Accountability Lab I envision a future where human dignity, justice, peace, kindness, care, respect, accountability, and rights and freedoms serve as the north stars that guide AI development and use. Realising these ideals can’t happen without intentional tireless work, dialogues, and confrontations of ugly realities – even if they are uncomfortable to deal with. This starts with deciphering hype from reality. Pervasive narratives portray AI as a magical, fully autonomous entity approaching a God-like omnipotence and omniscience. In reality, audits of AI systems reveal a consistent failure to deliver on grandiose promises and suffer from all kinds of shortcomings, issues often swept under the rug. AI in general, and GenAI in particular, encodes and exacerbates historical stereotypes, entrenches harmful societal norms, and amplifies injustice. A robust body of evidence demonstrates that — from hiring, welfare allocation, medical care allocation to anything in between — deployment of AI is widening inequity, disproportionately impacting people at the margins of society and concentrating power and influence in the hands of few. Major actors—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI—have willingly aligned with authoritarian regimes and proactively abandoned their pledges to fact-check, prevent misinformation, respect diversity and equity, refrain from using AI for weapons development, while retaliating against critique. The aforementioned vision can’t and won’t happen without confrontation of these uncomfortable facts. This is precisely why we need active resistance and refusal of unreliable and harmful AI systems; clearly laid out regulation and enforcement; and shepherding of the AI industry towards transparency and accountability of responsible bodies. "Machine agency" must be in service of human agency and empowerment, a coexistence that isn't a continuation of modern tech corporations’ inequality-widening,

so I am one of the 12 people (including the “god-fathers of AI”) that will be at the Vatican this September for a two full-day working group on the Future of AI

here is my Vatican approved short provocation on 'AI and Fraternity' for the working group

omg, it’s august. I am very much the typical academic for whom “August” means “time to panic about how unprepared for the upcoming school year I am!” I mean, to be fair, I was doing plenty of…

New post on my #knitting blog: update on kitchen renovations and other works in progress (including a hat AND fall course prep), but also a finished pair of socks!

whitknits.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/o...

A photo of a kitchen in the process of being remodeled; light wood cabinets are set up without countertops or appliances, the walls are painted green, and most importantly: there are three dimmable lights in the ceiling now!

We have light!! And it’s dimmable, and OMG, even without the lighting that’s gonna go over our snack bar, it’s already so much better than the lighting in the Before Kitchen.

A photo of a very satisfied-looking grey/brown tabby with white paws, lounging in the top drawer of a cabinet that has no countertop.

This cat is very pleased with himself.

A photo of a kitchen in the process of being remodeled; the walls are painted green, the cabinets are a light wood and don’t yet have handles, and there are no countertops, flooring, or appliances.

It’s starting to actually look like a kitchen as of this afternoon! (Photo credit goes to my spouse, @awatts.bsky.social)

It’s extra maddening that in the material you have to click through and fill in to appeal, you’re forced to acknowledge UMG as “the rights holder”. The whole fucking point is that *I am* the rights holder, not them!!

I’ve used past experiences with this as examples of “algorithmic injustice” in my classes. It’s just maddening to have rights claimed away by automated flagging tools, knowing that if a human EVER watched even two seconds, they’d know this isn’t a case of me posting copyrighted material.

Most reporting is just not up to the task of registering both that 1) the White House is *attacking* universities *as institutions* 2) the White House is working *with* universities’ boards to achieve *common goals* for remaking and weakening those institutions

I’ve been looking back at my previous promotion packet while trying to put together my current one and ooof, 2019 Me just had no idea what was coming. (It’s genuinely a little weird to read through it and see zero references to the pandemic/online teaching or to genAI.)

Oh no! So sorry! Gosh, this summer just isn’t being kind to anyone.

For me too, alas! I *think* it’s actually supposed to cool off a little overnight tonight (it didn’t, last night or the night before that).

86F. That’s the temperature our bedroom was this morning, with our A/C set to 76F. (Thermostat is on ground floor and bedroom is upstairs.)

I’m also playing without a shoulder rest recently, a change prompted by mine falling off a bunch and then realizing that hey, it actually feels weirdly, unexpectedly good to play without one. (And again, so little feels good right now, I’m taking what I can get!)

I’ve been not so much “practicing” this week as just “playing whatever feels good” (so little does right now so I’m taking what I can get) and it cracks me up that I got so into playing that I closed my eyes, and then forgot I had music in front of me to check when my brain crapped out!

A screenshot of the message that says that “UMG had taken action on your video because it may contain music that belongs to them.”

Like…sure, it’s mildly flattering that I apparently sound good enough to be mistaken (by a dumb auto-flagger) for a professional recording, but it’s actually infuriating that I can’t just share my own violin playing with friends to laugh at my stupid brain fart, you know?

I’ve been making practice videos again as part of my current round of 100 Days of Practice, and I posted this one to my FB; it’s the first video I’ve posted to my main page in awhile, and sure enough, UMG immediately claimed it. I AM SO SICK OF THIS!!

Germany used to lead the world in science. The language of science was German—until the Nazis came to power and chased out, imprisoned, or killed all the non-Nazi scientists. Fascists break good things, and it is happening here. (2/2)

But dammit, I’m so sick of having a headache. It’s at “uncomfortable all the time” level, not “I cannot function and can only moan in pain” like my headaches sometimes get, so at least there’s that, but ugh, I just want to feel good. Or at least not bad.

Playing headache-detective is super fun when literally everything could be causing it thanks to kitchen renovation (eating VERY differently than normal, being exposed to VOCs, sensory overload) and also our weather has been horrendously hot and humid so I’m sleeping like crap.