M A Osborne's Avatar

M A Osborne

@maosbot.bsky.social

Parent, spouse, Australian, Professor of Machine Learning in Oxford. Long Covid, trans rights, music, reggae on Fridays, AI must be good for humans, https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mosb

26,462 Followers  |  1,662 Following  |  2,745 Posts  |  Joined: 03.07.2023  |  2.188

Latest posts by maosbot.bsky.social on Bluesky

I aim to confuse

27.11.2025 17:31 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It is funny

27.11.2025 13:12 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

9YO had not heard of Cash and Nico (but is watching Minecraft videos on YouTube as I write): we will check out with thanks for the tip!

25.11.2025 17:30 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

FNF is also big in our household (and is also stupidly hard)!

23.11.2025 05:26 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Haha our kids are clearly well-aligned! It was indeed EVW 9YO was telling me about, and he sings the gangster rap non-stop (and plays the level). Very cool that your son is creating himself, I will share with 9YO :)

23.11.2025 05:24 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

With my ageing fine-motor skills and slowing reflexes

22.11.2025 17:17 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

I have played it, and am AWFUL

22.11.2025 17:17 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

9YO was just telling me about a Geometry Dash player who β€œis really good, even though he’s 39 years old”. I am 44. I will never recover from this devastating blow

22.11.2025 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 46    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 7    πŸ“Œ 0

Epilogue: I got another email like this today, and then I looked up the paper and discovered that it was real, I had co-authored it and then forgotten about it

18.11.2025 15:18 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Pretty bold to include a hallucinated citation putatively written by the very person to whom you are applying

12.11.2025 14:28 β€” πŸ‘ 21    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
Your work on Gaussian processes for environmental modeling (β€œActive Learning of Environmental Models,” Osborne et al., 2012) and multi-objective optimization for sustainability trade-offs (β€œThe Automation of Science,” King et al., 2009, with your contributions) directly informs my methodological approach. I propose:

1.  Bayesian optimization to identify high-impact monitoring

Your work on Gaussian processes for environmental modeling (β€œActive Learning of Environmental Models,” Osborne et al., 2012) and multi-objective optimization for sustainability trade-offs (β€œThe Automation of Science,” King et al., 2009, with your contributions) directly informs my methodological approach. I propose: 1. Bayesian optimization to identify high-impact monitoring

My work is so influential that prospective PhD students are now being influenced by papers that an LLM thinks I wrote but actually did not

12.11.2025 14:26 β€” πŸ‘ 24    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Efficacy of universal masking for source control and personal protection from simulated cough and exhaled aerosols in a room Face masks reduce the expulsion of respiratory aerosols produced during coughs and exhalations (β€œsource control”). Factors such as the directions in which people are facing (orientation) and separation distance also affect aerosol dispersion. ...

You’d think so, but to my knowledge this question has only been addressed in lab settings e.g. Lindsley et al. (2021),
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC..., Patel et al. (2016)
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC....

Source control is more effective than receiver control (intuitively)

04.11.2025 16:44 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Thanks David! One-way masking in a FFP3 seems to be working for me, but I have other layers of protection in addition (regular vaccination, clean air)

04.11.2025 15:21 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
ChrisFossArt.com – Chris Foss art, Chris Foss prints with unique customised sketches. Shop Shop Chris’ iconic images are available as prints from our shop Chris first experimented with airbrushes in the early 60’s and has become one of the most widely recognised artists using this m...

Came here to say this! Chris Foss is a legend chrisfossart.com

04.11.2025 15:18 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Haven’t been posting much, but I would like to confirm that I am still masking and still haven’t been reinfected with covid (funny how that works)

04.11.2025 15:16 β€” πŸ‘ 172    πŸ” 8    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 3

None of us play, but we would like to buy a piano keyboard for our kids: shouldn’t be top-of-the-line, but shouldn’t be junk, either. Any tips appreciated!

26.10.2025 12:34 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 7    πŸ“Œ 0
a lovely coastal scene with a red and white striped lifeguard station on a sandy beach. The foreground shows marram grass in the dunes, whilst offshore wind turbines are visible on the horizon. The dramatic cloudy sky adds atmosphere to the composition.

a lovely coastal scene with a red and white striped lifeguard station on a sandy beach. The foreground shows marram grass in the dunes, whilst offshore wind turbines are visible on the horizon. The dramatic cloudy sky adds atmosphere to the composition.

Copenhagen, 2024

07.10.2025 11:23 β€” πŸ‘ 30    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

🚨New AI Safety Course
@aims_oxford
!

I’m thrilled to launch a new called AI Safety & Alignment (AISAA) course on the foundations & frontier research of making advanced AI systems safe and aligned at
@UniofOxford

what to expect πŸ‘‡
robots.ox.ac.uk/~fazl/aisaa/

06.10.2025 16:40 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Thank you! I wasn’t sure about your post and appreciate the explicit confirmation!

06.10.2025 11:47 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I don’t love the description of increasing autism diagnoses as an β€œepidemic”

05.10.2025 17:41 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

As evidence for your theory, staff in shops often initiate conversations with me in English (unlike other customers), and the only reason i can imagine for why they do so is my mask

04.10.2025 17:16 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I am happy to defer to your judgement hereβ€”in addition to my visible privileges (gender, height), I’ve only lived in Aarhus, and only for a few months, which is unlikely to be representative

04.10.2025 13:58 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I am pretty sure that @brebis.bsky.social also lives in Denmark. My own 2p: no one else masks here, but I haven’t gotten any grief over my mask, either

04.10.2025 10:46 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Apes smart enough to figure out the various disciplines of complex science explaining how deeply they are screwing up the thin eggshell of biosphere that is their only plausible home, yet too dumb to do anything about it

04.10.2025 10:22 β€” πŸ‘ 54    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I just got my Covid booster, and you should, too!

24.09.2025 19:00 β€” πŸ‘ 60    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 0

Multilayer pony
My little perceptron

23.09.2025 08:16 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Covid is still out there, and masks still work

20.09.2025 17:14 β€” πŸ‘ 217    πŸ” 38    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 1

21575 (crazy!)

20.09.2025 05:53 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

5,290 papers will be published at NeurIPS this year. If you could still get the proceedings in a book, it would be like 50,000 pages long. That’s 14.5 papers a day to read each and every day until the next NeurIPS

18.09.2025 19:06 β€” πŸ‘ 38    πŸ” 9    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 4

Danes keep assuming I am foreign because I am wearing a mask and TBF they’re correct

12.09.2025 16:57 β€” πŸ‘ 28    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

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