Siobhan Mackenzie Hall

I'm on the job market looking for CS/ischool faculty and related positions! I'm broadly interested in doing research with policymakers and communities impacted by AI to inform and develop mitigations to harms and risks. If you've included any of my work in syllabi or policy docs please let me know!

We need new rules for publishing AI-generated research. The teams developing automated AI scientists have customarily submitted their papers to standard refereed venues (journals and conferences) and to arXiv. Often, acceptance has been treated as the dependent variable. 1/

Pitch your AI startup at NeurIPS 2025 in Mexico City! The application deadline is just a month away on October 15th.

Learn more and apply now: neurips.cc/Conferences/...

Today is the deadline! But we don't mind if you submit through the weekend, no one is checking ;)

Fingers crossed you made /
will make the deadline! 🤞

YouTube video by Piotr Mirowski Announcing early access to Fabula, a prototype AI app for writing by Google DeepMind researchers

Research prototype, early access announcement and participatory AI! I am really excited to invite you to try Fabula, an experimental app designed to serve as a writing tool for screenwriters and playwrights of all skill levels. We invite critical feedback: read the thread below!
youtu.be/YH7sZ2GN_m0

want to help shape the future of AI in latin america? then don't miss out on @lasalaai.bsky.social next march!
the past instances of this event have been truly fantastic, and i'm super pumped for the next one next year. don't miss out and apply today!
hope to see you in quito!! ♥️🇪🇨

Sinners was fun. I enjoyed that film. Good stuff sure.

We have a really strong position paper that has been rejected multiple times from arxiv, both CS.AI and CS.CY, because our "submission does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research and is not of interest to arXiv." Appealing has not helped. Any ideas of what we can do?

Honored to be named in TimeAI 100 list, along w/my awesome Google colleagues Josh Woodward & Hartmut Neven & many awesome people.

My recognition is due to collaboration with many great colleagues, so thank you to everyone I've been fortunate to work with over many years! 🙏

time.com/collections/...

We gathered in Kigali 🌍 for the 2025 Deep Learning Indaba. Nearly 3,000 applied, 1,294 joined in person, 400 virtually. 6 days of AI research, debate, teaching & learning. From 300 in 2017 → to a pan-African Baobab tree. 🌳 #DLI2025 @DeepIndaba 1/

An absolute 🔥🔥panel today at the Centring Data in African AI workshop at #DLI2025.

Joy Victor sharing the scary reality of (the lack of) data protection on the continent - social security numbers sold for as little as 7c.

“A high profile individual’s social security number was sold for as little as 7c.

⚡️⚡️AI Ethics

💡It's not enough to create data, we need to think about ethics. And for ethics we need to think about human understanding

💡Performance of the model is not enough. Also need interpretability.

Lightning talks continued

❓How do you crowdsource when there is no crowd?

We need to rethink the "conventions" on how we create data.

💡 An appropriate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem."
John Wilder Tukey

Next up we have another amazing keynote from Girmaw Abebe Tadesse, PhD from Microsoft’s AI for Good lab presenting his talk “Problem-driven and data-centric AI for Africa”

What an amazing community to be a part of

Next up we have our breakout sessions, where we look to our workshop attendees to share their insights across five prepared themes

⭐️ Data curation
⭐️ Who benefits from our data
⭐️ Beyond data
⭐️ Diversity
⭐️ Governance

✨African data has helped train LLMs to scale this support

✨ This data also helps create culturally and economically relevant AI - avoiding recommending "salmon" to an expecting mother living in extreme poverty

I often hear that critical AI researchers should start providing more solutions, but I rarely hear that uncritical AI researchers should start causing fewer problems.

Lyvia Lusiji: Data to Delivery: Designing LLMs for Maternal Health Impact in Low-Resource Settings

📣 Mums do not have access to the Internet
📣 Appointment reminders
📣 Q&A systems to support the pregnancy journey
📣 Triaging, with a human health desk when neededd

Lightning talks ⚡

📣 Who is benefitting from the data being collected?

A strong theme coming through even in the early hours at the workshop

Lightning talks ⚡

Praise Amonye: Blood, Bytes & Borders: Rethinking Data Sovereignty in AI-Driven Malaria Diagnosis in Africa

📣 When our data becomes bytes who controls the data?
📣 Stop exporting our data, start centring our data

*What Still Needs to Change*
✊Enforceable rights, contracts that protect us, pay that reflects our value, & systems of accountability.

✊Recognition. AI does not work “by itself.” It works because we work.

✊We need data workers to move from being tools to being co-creators

First up, we have the exceptional Joan Kinyua from the Data Labellers Association, an organisation advocating better rights for data workers ✊

I’ll be live posting from the Centring Data in African AI workshop happening in Kigali at the #DLI2025