Kit Colliver

Does body doubling help? There’s a zoom writing group I use with morning and afternoon sessions www.szwg.co.uk

Why Language Models Hallucinate, by Kalai et al. Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty. Such “hallucinations” persist even in state-of-the-art systems and undermine trust. We argue that language models hallucinate because the training and evaluation procedures reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty, and we analyze the statistical causes of hallucinations in the modern training pipeline. Hallucinations need not be mysterious—they originate simply as errors in binary classification. If incorrect statements cannot be distinguished from facts, then hallucinations in pretrained language models will arise through natural statistical pressures. We then argue that hallucinations persist due to the way most evaluations are graded—language models are optimized to be good test-takers, and guessing when uncertain improves test performance. This “epidemic” of penalizing uncertain responses can only be addressed through a socio-technical mitigation: modifying the scoring of existing benchmarks that are misaligned but dominate leaderboards, rather than introducing additional hallucination evaluations. This change may steer the field toward more trustworthy AI systems.

Ironically, it appears that AI chatbots hallucinate for the same reason that students feel compelled to use them:

They were socialized in a high-stakes testing culture that rewards guessing and maybe getting it right over admitting when there's something you just don't know.

For my brother’s kids, I am Pibl Kit (their parent’s sibling) and they are my niblings.

How much did this failed experiment in social cleansing cost, we wonder? God forbid they engage in meaningful consultation before titting about like this.

It’s an important and exciting project and the contract duration and scope for independence are rarely seen in the world of fixed term research positions.

I don’t know the PI personally but my partner speaks very highly of her.

This looks rather wonderful!

You’re brilliant, Ruth. So well-deserved.

Reading this back and boy am I excited about Ruth’s zines and sexual health.

It’s here!

ruthpearce.net/2025/05/26/p...

Also the folks at that drop-in are lovely. Get tested! In person! All the ones you actually need! No appointments!

Lolilol I’ll omilil milk lmikmll I’ll il I’ll lm lam zzi

📌 thank you

Gratifying to see a legal view line up with my own instinctive interpretation. @reactiveashley.bsky.social is arguing that the Supreme Court ruling is consistent with implementing a ‘bigots toilet’ and retaining trans-inclusive single-sex facilities.

Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention Red Flag Alert on Anti-trans and intersex Rights in the UK Released on 30th of June 2025

All of the actions described above fit neatly into the 9th Pattern of Genocide: "Denial and/or Prevention of Identity." As we have repeatedly stated over the years, genocide does not only manifest in the killing of an entire group. In the case of trans and intersex people, genocide is often perpetrated by making it impossible for individuals to exist as their true selves. The erasure of a group from public life is a step towards an attempt to erase that group's existence, which is the very definition of genocide. The UKSC's decision puts trans and intersex people at peril by forcing them to either out themselves or break the law, both of which run the risk of violent backlash. To explicitly confirm this, gratitude was extended in the UKSC ruling Ben Cooper KC, acting on behalf of Sex Matters. The latter is an explicitly anti-trans lobbying group that has since written to the NHS claiming that transitioning "becomes a major, permanent social problem for those (transgender) young people" — a claim that flies in the face of all serious research on transgender youth.

In the time it’s taken me to write up my research on the impact of voter ID on trans people, the UK has managed to slide from a position of impinging on trans citizenship rights to setting off alarm bells at anti-genocide organisations.

My overall impression is that the EHRC guidance does not make it clear how to deliver trans inclusive services.

It is effectively advice on how organisations can exclude trans and gender diverse people from services, which is an unusual approach for a human rights organisation to take.

Spent the entire evening writing up the EHRC response for @rtie.org

And that’s with members’ feedback already collated.

That guidance and the consultation are trash - lengthy, confusing, mired in bigotry - and I feel like my eyes are bleeding.

Graphic with a purple background. In a bright green text box at the top it says "The EHRC's Consultation on their draft Code of Practice closes today!". Underneath are three drawings of placards, they say "Trans people belong", "Inclusion not Exclusion" and "No segregation! Trans Liberation". The Scottish Trans and Equality Network logos are at the bottom.

Its the final day to complete the EHRC's consultation on their draft code of practice. If you want to fill it in and share your voice in support of trans inclusion, today’s your last chance!

We've created a full guide w/ Mermaids & TransActual, on our website - www.scottishtrans.org/supreme-cour...

Meme image of Bernie Sanders, with text that reads, I am once again updating my mega post about how awful the Cass Review is.

I've added FOUR new peer-reviewed academic articles to my round-up post, "What's wrong with the Cass Review?" Together, these highlight serious ethical issues with the Cass Review's design, recommendations, and implementations. It's important to keep this story live! ruthpearce.net/2024/04/16/w...

I feel validated.

From bathrooms to the ballot box: UK trends undermining trans* citizenship - Transforming Society Ash Stokoe and Kit Colliver argue that, amid intensifying anti-trans rhetoric and legal rollbacks, trans* people in the UK are increasingly excluded from public life, with voter ID laws and a recent S...

For Pride month, @ashstokoe.bsky.social and I have a blog in Transforming Society, 'From bathrooms to the ballot box: UK trends undermining trans* citizenship'.

We're looking at the Supreme Court's 'sex' ruling in light of our voter ID research. www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2025/06/11/f...

Some kind of crafting - I knit - and audiobooks! People suggested podcasts to me when I had the Big Concussion, but I didn’t have enough exec function to make choices. Shout if you’d like recommendations!

Porty Pride and Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh logos above a beach background. Text: RTiE Big Trans Picnic Join us on the beach for a relaxed gathering of trans people and their allies. We're here to find new friends, reconnect with familiar faces and build community together. All welcome. Saturday 7th of June 13:00-15:00 Cake Stand on The Beach 49 Promenade, EH15 2BA

Big Trans Picnic @ Porty Pride 07 June 1-3pm!
Bring blankets, food, water and sunscreen to share or just for yourself, well behaved children and badly behaved pets. This is an outdoor event.
If the rain gets bad we will use our contingency venue @ Porty Town Hall - look out for our stories!

A tall white woman in a floral short playing saxophone in front of a PowerPoint presentation. Black text on a white background reads: The data was hard to gather, but it tells a story about wh… it’s… trans people whose gender is recategorised… there… a way to tell those stories.

The Queer Data showcase is fantastic. Lots of excellent funny, thought-provoking presentations and my highlight so far has been
@katherinewyers.bsky.social with improv sax accompanying her story of the emotional toll of queer fieldwork.

A single sociologist. Not a medic. Not even an expert in gender and sexuality. A guy whose academic contribution and teaching is on social movements and protest actions, gone entirely off-piste for the sake of bigotry.

Thanks for all the work on it. Unfortunately the link you’ve posted isn’t working?

📌

A map of the UK coloured according to where I’ve lived (5 points), stayed (4), visited (3), stopped (2) or passed through (1). A lot of it is coloured orange, meaning I’ve stayed there. The total score is 245.

Data collection has sure gotten me about a bit. smstone0.github.io#/uk-map

A hand-knitted sock in grey, black and brown against a coral coloured wall.

Light grey tracksuits tucked into two hand-knitted socks in grey, black and brown, photographed against a coral coloured wall.

One sock. Now two socks.

There’s been murmurs of setting up some online silent writing sessions through the trans scholars network. I’d love to see that - and any other plans for writing with company - come to fruition.

I hear you!

Fab, thanks Chris! Wonder if there’s merit in an emergency amendment on that front - but I don’t know enough about congress timeframes!