Anand Sarwate (he/him)

We’re hiring in Cambridge CS! Assistant/Associate Professor position in AI and machine learning, including learning theory and related areas of theoretical computer science. Apply here: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

“and the republic said the darkness you fight is within you, and also a missing wet signature”

The Venn diagram of “I do my own research” and “I parrot back whatever the AI spits out” seems to have a larger intersection these days.

When I teach linear I like to point out that the mathematical use comes via gardening. Womb -> a growing place -> a garden plot with lines of string to make a grid to put a regular array of seeds -> an array of numbers each with its designated spot.

No one should be taken seriously when they say things like “update my priors” unless they can explain how to derive the Kalman filter. Desperate times call for desperate measures, people!

The Woke Wizards of A.I. sounds like a YA series, or maybe fanfic. If the latter, is it the kind that “rationalists” get off on? [sickos guy here]

The first fallacy is why the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s “here’s a thing I personally am cranky about” articles are dreck.

“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.” Bertie Wooster

Ok but what about the Naviest Stokes? Or is that the Naïvest Stokes? Or the Navier Stonks?

“Sparks of lying and bullying“ might be a good title for a paper.

1. Recently I’ve received lots of emails from people I don’t know personally, asking for my feedback on their books or papers. They explain the connection between my work and theirs and ask me to take a look. The catch, of course, is that the emails are transparently, obviously, written by AI.

PSA OTD: just because a paper uses crappy notation doesn't mean you need to as well! This goes quadruple for people who have outsourced their brains to genAI.

my unfinished paper draft watching me start a new paper

It feels a certain way knowing that @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I published the rebuttal to this article… six months ago.

Is there a technical term for when an organization pre-capitulates to unspecified demands? Besides cowardice that is. Asking for a friend^H^H^H^H^H^Hprofessional society.

Hear me out: one of those "cafe order filling" mobile games, only you are an editor at a journal and have to manage the review process. Later levels introduce LLM-generated papers and reviews. Not sure what the score should be: impact factor is probably not so good...

RIP Richard Tapia... cacm.acm.org/news/in-memo...

So many recent reasons to look forward to sabbatical: the demolishing of postgraduate research in the US, Rutgers Engineering making a huge mistake and a comically ham-fisted blustering excuse, the Canvas hack... Is a sabbatical fiddling while it burns or a time-out in the corner with a dunce cap?

Are you looking for something to do this Saturday evening? Come here NYCC perform the Duruflé Requiem!

Breaking: Trump has fired the membership of the National Science Board, which is oversees NSF. I have confirmed separately with multiple now-former members of NSB.

davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o... An interesting read, with lots of food for thought. It reminds me of my enthusiasm for "mathematical clean-up work", i.e. going back to the foundations of a topic, making the constants sharper, proofs nicer (and more modern), and the like.

Good enough for government work?

Stop what you're doing and read this absolute miracle of an OMNI Magazine interview with Claude Shannon on @archive.org: - "I am always building totally useless gadgets just because they're fun to make. They have no commercial value but may be amusing." 🔗 archive.org/details/omni...

The fact that EDAS cannot handle $$ for LaTeX markup is just gross incompetence on the part of the designers. OFC, it's also a terrible product in so many other ways...

Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick, I think. Doubt I can make it before it melts...

i shouldn’t give this piece any more attention than it has already garnered but i feel like it is worth pointing out some flaws in the argument/unquestioned assumptions thread 1/

Data should not be allowed to drive until it is 16 years old. Moreover, it should have a permit if it will be involved in learning.

My most influential educator was my grade school librarian, Dorothy Vickers-Shelley. She made us recite a pledge each time: "Life is short. Therefore I shall be a crusader in the fight against ignorance and fear, beginning with myself." Engraved on me at age 5: a charge that I aspire to fulfill.

Shame on the preemptive compliance, especially from Rutgers, right @ruaaup-aft.bsky.social ?

Got an email/newsletter using Lena as an example image. It's 2026. C'mon, people.

Someone should gift my senator, Chuck Schumer, a copy of Max Frisch’s Biedermann und die Brandstifter. I am guessing he does not know German, but I can’t find a translation in Spinelesscowardese so maybe English will have to do. Perhaps he will need some Cliff‘s Notes.

ICLR AC: "The scores were too low, reject. Reviewer A's score was the lowest." Also ICLR AC: "Reviewer A was marked as AI generated." Also also ICLR AC: "Reviewer A is unlikely to raise their score." It's ok to reject the paper, but come on...

My partner @drnycnerd.bsky.social and co-authors from @cnti.bsky.social published a report on how people use LLM-based chatbots to get the news (even if it is wrong). cnti.org/reports/chat...

“When we use terms like ‘output,’ ‘feedback,’ ’interface,’ and ‘networking’ to express the transactions of everyday life, we reveal how thoroughly artificial things now shape our sense of human being.” -Langdon Winner, “The Whale and the Reactor” (Preface)

Bezos calling his new startup Prometheus just makes me think of Jay Sherman's college film. I'll just call it "Promotheus" from now on.

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

TFW you open a new browser tab and your fingers automatically type "overleaf.c" + tab.

Good news about the cutting-edge AI tools from the $3-trillion-dollar company.

Worn, vintage yet precious to my heart. Souvenir: a mousepad from #ISIT 1998, the International Symposium on Information Theory, in honor of Claude E. Shannon 1948 paper, "A mathematical theory of communication", where I was a lucky voluntary student.