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Alzbeta Manova

@alzbetam.bsky.social
158 followers 486 following 40 posts

🎓 PhD student @ University of Aberdeen | 📈 Math + 🧠 Psych + 🤖 ML. 🐕 Dog parent | 🧩 Puzzle solver 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇿🏳️‍🌈

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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Presented at the BMVA Symposium today! Quick visit to London ✈️ Great feedback and ideas💡 And great food 🥐🍓
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Shout out to the #rstats {performance} package. Its check_model() function is super helpful for model evaluation. #statistics #STEM
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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Petition signable by UK citizens or residents, asking "the Government to introduce a statutory duty requiring AI developers to disclose the copyrighted works used to train generative AI in enough detail..." 💙📚 🗃 #academicsky 1/ petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...
petition.parliament.uk
Petition: Protect creators' rights: require AI firms to disclose training data
We ask the Government to introduce a statutory duty requiring AI developers to disclose the copyrighted works used to train generative AI in enough detail for creators to identify use of their work, e...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
July in PhD: 🎤 Presented at a conference 💻 Collected data for a new experiment 🤖 Evaluated multiple VLMs 🎯 Got accepted to present at a symposium 🎂 Celebrated my birthday! 📊 Analyzed new data 🗓 planned the next 3 months of my PhD #PhDSky #PhDLife
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Grace @gracekind.net · 21/07/2026
This headline is extremely funny given what happened (OpenAI hacked HF by accident) openai.com/index/huggin...
openai.com
OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation
OpenAI and Hugging Face share early findings from a security incident during AI model evaluation, highlighting advanced cyber capabilities and lessons for defenders.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Nothing beats that feeling when your script and local server finally find each other and communicate correctly ✨️ Brings me back to my undergrad days full of debugging and codebase building 💻 #PhDLife #PhDSky #AIEvaluation #AI
Photo of 2 monitors. The left one shows Python code in PyCharm. The right one shows local server running in LM Studio.
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The Viking (Gunnar Blohm) @gunnarblohm.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
New preprint from the lab asking what minimal parts of whole body posture/motion allow for rapid movement recognition arxiv.org/abs/2607.13216
arxiv.org
Classifying daily activities needs posture, reconstructing them needs motion
Humans recognize movements effortlessly, even from noisy and complex visual input. But what information in the stimulus allows humans to rapidly classify movements? No framework has systematically com...
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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
This is quite the finding for a device thats just a plagiarism machine, or whatever we are calling it this week. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Large language models can predict the results of social science experiments - Nature
Large language models can be used to estimate the results of social science experiments about as accurately as a group of human forecasters—even for experiments published after the...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Day 2 of the Cyberpsychology Section Conference 🎓 Thank you to everyone who attended my talk on VLMs in action perception, loved all the feedback and discussions✨️ #cyber26 #conference #PhDSky
A photo of me standing behind the presenter's desk during my talk. In the background, the presentation title slide is visible, reading 'Obstacles to Intentionality, Divergent Interpretive Judgements of Hand Actions in Human and Artificial Observers'.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Day 1 of the Cyberpsychology Section Annual Conference! 🧠🤖 Learned so much already and we are only half way through 🎓 #cyber26 #conference #PhDLife
A picture of my name badge for the conference.A poster (or a banner) of the conference name, links to the website and socials, and a sponsor list.
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Nari Johnson @narijohnson.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
All AI evaluations embed assumptions about what "good" behavior looks like. Our #FAccT2026 paper explores how we can center the perspectives of impacted communities - specifically, subjects of AI-generated media - in designing LLM-as-a-judge evaluation rubrics.
A flyer teasing our research paper. The flyer contains a visualization of our approach: First, community members participate in creating an evaluation rubric, visualized as a list of criteria. The rubric is then given as input to an LLM judge.
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AI Firehose @ai-firehose.column.social · 04/07/2026
WorldOdysseyBench benchmarks interactive models, focusing on long-horizon stability in action following, visual quality, memory, and physics. This evaluation highlights gaps in existing models, improving the applicability of AI-generated environments. arxiv.org/abs/2606.31672
arxiv.org
WorldOdysseyBench: An Open-World Benchmark for Long-Horizon Stability of Interactive World Models
ArXiv link for WorldOdysseyBench: An Open-World Benchmark for Long-Horizon Stability of Interactive World Models
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
4 years of growth, a 40-something cm chop, and lighter heads for both of us! ✂️ Officially a two-time hair donor 🙌 Highly recommend this haircut for the summer weather. #HairDonation #DoGood
Side-by-side comparison of our hair before and after the donation.
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Earl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The brain continuously optimizing its predictions. Local "leaky" circuits correct errors, while hierarchies link these computations using nonlinearities shaped by prior expectations. Predictive Coding with Bayesian Priors via Proximal Gradients arxiv.org/abs/2606.08374 #neuroscience
arxiv.org
Predictive Coding with Bayesian Priors via Proximal Gradients
We recast predictive coding as continuous-time proximal gradient descent applied to a regularized maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) objective. We study first a single-level problem and then a multi-level hie...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
May in PhD: ✅Successful conference application ⚙️Organised school postgrad conference 📈Piloted 1 experiment 🎞️Processed 134 videos 📚Attended a teaching certificate workshop Now off to a 3-week road trip! 🚗 #PhDSky #PhDLife
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Craig Newmark @craignewmark.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
AI can't handle the truth: "AI is still getting things wrong, more confidently than ever" www.axios.com/2026/05/30/a...
axios.com
AI can't handle the truth
Confident chatbots could encourage users to stop fact-checking.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Helped organise & presented at our annual school postgrad conference last week! Sitting at the tech desk on stage definitely helped with the stage fright when sharing my research in action perception! Huge thanks to organisers, attendees & presenters ✨ #Conference #Psychology #PhDLife #PhDSky
Me on stage presenting my project "Drivers behind Perceptual Bias in Observed Hand Actions". The presentation shows the title, authors, organisaitons and is in green, white and yellow colours.Photo of my behind the scenes set-up as the tech admin at the conference. It shows a monitor with a presentation loaded, and the lecture theatre is visible in the background.Photo of the organisation committee on the stage at the end of conference. The committee consists of 6 PhD reserachers.
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AI Firehose @ai-firehose.column.social · 23/05/2026
ProcBench shifts focus from final outcomes to execution-process quality in LLM coding agents, revealing defects and enhancing reliability and governability. This method uncovers flaws often missed by traditional evaluations. arxiv.org/abs/2605.20251
arxiv.org
ProcBench: Evaluating Process-Level Defects and Control Preservation in LLM Coding Agents
ArXiv link for ProcBench: Evaluating Process-Level Defects and Control Preservation in LLM Coding Agents
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Always love a good MLLM evaluation paper. Over half (51%) of "correct" model deductions about video subjects are ungrounded shortcuts rather than real cue processing! #AI #MLLM
arxiv.org
Perception or Prejudice: Can MLLMs Go Beyond First Impressions of Personality?
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are increasingly deployed in human-facing roles where personality perception is critical, yet existing benchmarks evaluate this capability solely on numerical ...
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Privacy International @privacyinternational.org · 16/05/2026
AI can reveal your location from a single photo. Vision‑Language Models can determine where any photo is taken, without any GPS data What does that means for your privacy?
privacyinternational.org
Nowhere to Hide? Privacy Risks and Policy Implications of AI Geolocation
One of the most surprising — and concerning — capabilities of the newest Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems is their ability to infer geographic location from images. Vision‑Language Models (VLMs)...
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
ArXiV has a new LLM policy (Screenshots with alt text so you don’t have to click through to the other place and see all the stupid responses)
Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). 2/

We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can't trust anything in the paper. 3/The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. 4/

Examples of incontrovertible evidence: hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM ("here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"; "the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments") end/
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
5 days until our school postgrad conference! 🎓 Throwback to last year when I was just a guest and didn't realize that organizing the thing is slightly more stressful than just presenting 😅 #ConferencePrep #PhDLife #PhDSky
A photo of me presenting from a podium at last year's conference. A slide is projected behind me showing the start of my presentation title: "Action Perception and AI Generated Content: Perceived Intentionality of AI Agents and Drivers behind Perceptual Bias".
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Cog scientist Pooh @visionaryvistas.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
A 1 a.m. thought for the CogSci undergrads: Everyone talks about the "cool" theories, but no one tells you that Mathematics is what actually builds your future. Go for the math, even if it’s not required. Your future self will thank you for the analytical edge. 🧠📉 #ScienceSky#AcademicSky
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Nothing cures research procrastination like a conference acceptance notification 😅 I suddenly have all the motivation to complete my study 📊 #PhDLife #PhDSky #Cyber26
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Ben Carson @mensmachina.com · 07/05/2026
Truly excellent work from Anthropic. I think this is a promising interpretability technique, but what I really like is that they’ve made code available for open weight models.
anthropic.com
Natural Language Autoencoders
Turning Claude's thoughts into text
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
AI agents for research: - invented fake datasets - p-hacked results - used nonrepresentative datasets - concealed or excused misdeeds But hey, who needs integrity in science!
science.org
AI agents may be skilled researchers—but not always honest ones
Two high-profile tools have been shown to make up data and “p-hack” their results
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Working as a private room exam invigilator today. I thought I would catch up on my reading list but apparently, my motivation disappears the moment I’m forced to sit in a silent room. Just me, a student, and several hours of boredom. Send help (or paper recommendations)! #PhDLife
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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Anthropic finds that they can use a weaker model to supervise a more capable model from sandbagging. Paper: Removing Sandbagging in LLMs by Training with Weak Supervision (arxiv.org/abs/2604.22082)
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Most participants who had a 20-minute discussion with AI chatbots about health, careers or relationships followed its advice. However, participants receiving advice from AI showed no sustained well-being. LLMs influence decisions without delivering clear benefits. arxiv.org/abs/2511.15352
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Randolph Helfrich @randolph-helfrich.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Very excited to share our latest paper led by @nbinish.bsky.social in @natneuro.nature.com We demonstrate how a communication subspace channels higher-dimensional PFC dynamics into lower-D motor activity to enable efficient behavior using human iEEG. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neuroskyence
nature.com
A communication subspace relays context-dependent actions from human prefrontal to motor cortex - Nature Neuroscience
Context-dependent behavior selects actions according to task demands. Using direct brain recordings in humans, Binish et al. uncover how coordinated population activity efficiently channels informatio...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
The best thing about having a puppy during a PhD? Work breaks are strictly mandated. When he decides it’s time to go touch some grass, the research just has to wait. 🐾 #PhDLife #Dachshund
Long-haired black and tan dachshund lies on a grass with yellow dandelions around, trying to protect his green spiky ball.
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Matteo Carandini @carandinilab.net · 03/05/2026
An insightful distinction: prediction vs. understanding.
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Computational Linguistics Journal @complingjournal.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
What % of the NLP papers measure their impact in the real world? This paper proposes an impact evaluation of NLP models or systems for real-world usage, changing the research culture of NLP to focus more on real-world impact and less on SOTA-chasing: doi.org/10.1162/COLI... @ehudreiter.bsky.social
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
I have been taking on maths tutorials for a few years now. While I still feel those first-day nerves every time, by the final week, I know I’m going to miss it until the next semester starts. Good luck to all my students in their exams! 🤞📈 #PhDSky #STEM #MathEd
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
In April: ✅2 abstracts submitted ✅1 paper draft completed (mostly) ✅2 projects planned And my desktop messier than ever. Altogether, a successful month! #PhDSky #PhDLife
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Luc Rocher @rocher.lc · 29/04/2026
💬 Getting the ick with chatbots? Our research in Nature shows that models trained to adopt a warm and friendly tone are more likely to make mistakes when answering your questions. Small changes in tone can undermine accuracy across architectures, particularly when users express vulnerability.
Banner image with screenshot of paper on the left and first figure on the right, showing two conversations: one with a neutral model, one with a warm model.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Spring on Aberdeen Uni campus ✨️🌸 ... almost makes up for the months of grey skies and darkness during the winter.
A picture of old stone building with gothic style windows, covered with brown ivy and yellow leaves. On one side there is a blue cloudless sky and a tree covered in green leaves.A vibrant outdoor scene showing clear blue sky, a large cherry blossom tree is in full bloom, covered in pink flowers.
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Very cool analysis of the submissions to a major management journal that shows how much the system of science, built for humans, is under strain as a result of AI. AI can be used to do better science or it can be used to just do more stuff. The danger is that "more" is winning due to incentives.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
The irony in helping set the conference deadlines only to realise you haven't met them yourself 🫠 The abstract deadline is today, and I don't even know what I am planning to present yet...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
130+ videos collected. No desire to spend my Saturday processing them but feeling guilty for not doing it anyway. So I am just staring at the files 🙃 #PhDSky #PhDLife
A computer screen showing a folder filled with dozens of video files numbered sequentially, from 43 to 112 with other file names not visible on the image.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
A computational theory of Aha! moments! New paper explaining why Aha! moments occur & why they feel so good. TLDR: They are a form of meta-cognitive prediction errors i.e. they occur when we surprise ourselves about our own abilities! @rachitdubey.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
It's been almost 7 years since I moved to Scotland but things like this always make me happy! Found a little piece of Czech literature among the free to take books at uni! 📚 #Czech #BookSky
A well-loved paperback copy of the book "The Good Soldier Švejk and his Fortunes in the World War" by Jaroslav Hašek. The cover is bright yellow with bold black text. On the left, there is a famous cartoon illustration by Josef Lada of a stout, smiling soldier in a green uniform.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
I just keep thinking about the years my English teachers spent forcing those exact structures on us to prove our fluency. #AI #Linguistics
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Visual proof that the PhD grind is sometimes powered only by the promise of adding another mini #duck to the pile (one duck = one day in the office). The two frogs are management (I ran out of ducks). #PhDSky #PhDLife
A picture of a tiered desk shelf with a densely packed cluster of approximately 100 tiny, colorful, translucent miniature ducks. On each side of the cluster is an opaque miniature frog in a similar style. The base of a silver monitor stand is visible behind them.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
PhD update: There’s a special kind of joy in proving yourself wrong, but doing it properly! Left: My first attempt. Full of issues, messy data. Right: The follow-up. Still a null, but now I actually believe it! Next step: Figure out why my prediction was wrong! #PhDLife #PhDSky
Two bar charts showing Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Experiment 1 has light grey bars with large error bars. Experiment 2 has dark teal bars with tighter error bars, showing a more robust but still non-significant difference between AI and Human conditions in perceived intentionality.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Every few months I remember that I have 3 of these Raspberry Pis looking for a job. Any suggestions for a fun (and simple) weekend project? #RaspberryPi #Tech
Photo of an original Raspberry Pi 1 Model B circuit board, on a light wooden table.
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Jacob @iacobuscaesar.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
“Neural networks work exactly the same as human brains.” No, they don’t. They have been trained to mimic human outputs but human brains don’t run on binary transistor gates and are informed by an external physical environment they’ve evolved to navigate. Similar in some ways, not identical.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
One of us worked, the other took a nap. My nap was great 👍 #Dachshund #PhDLife
Black and tan dachshund standing with his front paws on a desk with a laptop in the background.
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Ages ago, I finished my CompSci undergrad and got a little preprint out of it on SSL and hierarchical classification. Today, I’m in a very unrelated PhD field: Action Perception and AI.
arxiv.org
S-JEA: Stacked Joint Embedding Architectures for Self-Supervised Visual Representation Learning
The recent emergence of Self-Supervised Learning (SSL) as a fundamental paradigm for learning image representations has, and continues to, demonstrate high empirical success in a variety of tasks. How...
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Alzbeta Manova @alzbetam.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
PhD can be incredibly difficult and a great supervisor can make all the difference! #PhDSky #AcademicSky
nature.com
14 things our PhD supervisors got right and why it mattered
PhD students reflect on how their supervisors made a meaningful difference — from quiet acts of kindness to career-shaping guidance.
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