iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jordan Boyd-Graber

Dan Waterfield @danwaterfield.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My 👏 culture 👏 is 👏 not 👏 your 👏 costume 👏

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

No, but it's safe to assume that until you get additional information.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm really excited to build new connections in Singapore and Asia more broadly, so please do reach out!

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I've been connected to the University of Maryland in one way or another since 2009, and that's not going to change with this move. I still have students I remain committed to graduating, and I hope to remain involved with my long-time collaborators.

Old Jordan with members of his current cohort of students: Yuening, Feng, Ishani, and Zongxia.

Young Jordan with his first students: Yuening, Viet-An, and Ke.

Freshly-tenured Jordan with Shi and Yoshinari.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm agressively recruiting students and postdocs for 2027. I've tried to outline everything on my openings page, including a university-level postdoc with a deadline in October (but info sessions next week): openings.boydgraber.org

openings.boydgraber.org

Jordan Boyd-Graber: Openings

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm moving to Nanyang Technological University in Singapore to start a new lab! We'll still be dedicated to adversarial QA, human-computer collaboration, probabilistic modeling, and the other fun hijinx my students and I have been up to, but now (hopefully) bigger and better.

Jordan and his wife in front of Singapore Strait

Jordan and his daughters (faces blured) in front of Nanyang gate in Yunan garden.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Correction: July 11 ... I had my timezone for the ICML schedule still set to North America!

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

This is just a single game at ICML, not a whole tournament. Hope you can join us!

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Anyone at ICML (or in Seoul) want to play against an AI in visual quiz bowl at our workshop on the 10th, lunchtime? We have AI opponents and teammates. Reply here or send me an e-mail (jbg@umiacs.umd.edu), subject "EMMQA Expo". Leads appreciated! youtu.be/VrsEn_69Nb8

youtu.be

Human vs. Computer Picture Trivia Competition at ICML 2026

YouTube video by Jordan Boyd-Graber

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Reposted by Jordan Boyd-Graber

Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Some professional news: After adding use MoreResearch as _; use MoreMentoring as _; use MoreTeaching as _; use MoreService as _; the UMD trait solver has accepted the where-clause where Rob: Professor On this occasion, some thanks and some thoughts are in order! 1/5

President's letter informing promotion to the rank of Professor in the Department of Computer Science, effective July 1, 2026.

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Reposted by Jordan Boyd-Graber

Alexander Hoyle @alexanderhoyle.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Very delighted to announce the next step in my career! After my postdoc at ETH, I will begin a joint appointment at TU Wien and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna as an Assistant Professor in NLP. I'm so grateful to all who helped me along the way And yes, I’m hiring! Details on PhD positions below

Photo of me in front of Stephansdom looking like a big dork

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

The ICML 2026 Workshop on Efficient Multimodal Question Answering (EMM-QA) Contact email: emm-qa-organizers@googlegroups.com Workshop website: qanta-org.github.io/competition/...

qanta-org.github.io

EMM-QA 2026 Workshop

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

The first deadline for submitting a paper to our workshop is today, but there are lots of opportunities to participate: submit a trivia playing robot, play yourself, or write (multimodal) questions. Please share the word! (More details/links in the first comment.)

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Sign up to play here: qanta-org.github.io/competition/... Submit systems here: qanta-org.github.io/competition/... Submit adversarial questions here: qanta-org.github.io/competition/... Take part in our ICML 2026 workshop: qanta-org.github.io/competition/...

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

QANTA is back for 2026, introducing images into our questions! You can play quizbowl with AI, build systems, or write adversarial questions… and win cool prizes! All happening on 27. June at UMD, online 28. June, or at an ICML 2026 workshop in Seoul – completely free with cash prizes!

Human teams playing multimodal quiz bowl at George Washington University, staring at a screen with a picture of two Mormon missionaries on bikes. A moderator is reading the question, the players are looking confused and are trying to interpret computer output.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Can you spot when AI bluffs? Can you outguess AI or work with one to dominate trivia? Can you make an AI that can figure out tricky visual questions?

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

1) Low-brow but fun: Harry Turtledove, e.g. Worldwar (Aliens disrupt WW2). 2) Fatherland by Richard Harris, Nazis win WW2 3) Pashazade : The First Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, the central powers won WW1 4) Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson: Harper's Ferry was a victory

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Reposted by Jordan Boyd-Graber

Lorenz Meyer @thereallorenzmeyer.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Liebe Medien, ich kann die Schlagzeile "Keine Einigung zwischen USA und Dänemark" nicht mehr sehen. Wenn ein Bewaffneter eine Bank stürmt, titelt ihr doch auch nicht: "Räuber und Kassiererin finden keinen Konsens über Geldübergabe." Hört auf, imperiale Aggression als normale Diplomatie zu framen.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

I agree that Mallet >> Gensim, but VI can also work well. It's just more finicky, and Gensim's implementation doesn't do the things that Mallet does to optimize hyperparameters. So just like we shouldn't let LDA get a bad rap because of Gensim, we shouldn't let VI get a bad rap because of Gensim.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

I'm so ahead of the curve on AI, I've been using this strategy for a decade.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Um, actually, that's a Diaeresis: www.frathwiki.com/Diaeresis_an... I believe the planet Diaeresis is also the planet where Reva Sevander kidnapped Leia until she was rescued by Obi-Wan.

frathwiki.com

Diaeresis and Umlaut - FrathWiki

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

I think you mean: Terror has spread. Even in The Loop, hundreds run from gunshots. Traffic has ground to a halt. Unable to do anything to prevent the stampede, hundreds scream from the sidewalks. "Police" stand by, doing nothing.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

We had come at it more from the position of trying to use as few dev examples as possible (to keep them secret). I.e., use the best items you could and every model uses the exact same. But it makes sense to use the adaptive testing scenario if you don't mind potentially exposing more dev.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Link to paper since I ran out of room: users.umiacs.umd.edu/~ying/docs/2...

users.umiacs.umd.edu

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

In 2021, we proposed using IRT to find bad examples and to create more targeted leaderboards (Evaluation Examples Are Not Equally Informative: How Should That Change NLP Leaderboards?). From my reading, the big difference seems to be that they're also using the agent's skill, which is super cool!

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

We also found that it's helpful for improving uncertainty estimation of models: arxiv.org/abs/2205.12507

arxiv.org

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

If it said that 1990 was "about 10 years ago", I would say that it has reached tenured faculty-level intelligence.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Today's the deadline to apply for an AI-specific teaching track position at UMD: umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni... Please join us!

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

A couple of weeks ago I left my family behind at a cable car station to finish climbing to the peak of a mountain because they were too scared to continue. When I reached the top, my phone gave a notification: new podcasts available for download. Apparently LMU has an observatory on Wendelstein.

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Do you mean salary, physical facilities, work environment, or funding ecosystem?

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

At the risk of picking out one of my favorite children, this was the paper with our best traditional video of this cycle (thanks to Jon May for playing along): t.co/QQlgwzo6jf t.co/2G6kwAAPMy

t.co

https://youtu.be/L_hcHQep3fc

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

My students and I are presenting three papers on Monday at #ACL2025 and this thread will recap them (including their videos).

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

The precursor to this paper "The Incoherence of Coherence" had our most-watched paper video ever, so I thought we had to surpass it somehow ... so we decided to do a song parody (of Roxanne, obviously): youtu.be/87OBxEM8a9E

youtu.be

ProxAnn (Sting Parody): An AI Alternative to NPMI [Research]

YouTube video by Jordan Boyd-Graber

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Which makes this: users.umiacs.umd.edu/~ying/docs/n... "The Hobbit"

users.umiacs.umd.edu

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Sara’s Crias went 4-2 to win the tournament (and $150 dollars). Noah Sheidlower’s music packet was the most difficult for computers, and Jame Carlson’s Spatial Reasoning was the fan favorite. We’ll announce writer and computer prizes after our online mirror. (And also post the packets.)

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Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

We had our first human–computer cooperative AI tournament at the UMD. Key takeaways: 1) computers are getting better at trivia 2) they still suck at calibration 3) our teaming mechanic kept the games competitive and mostly fun (at least that’s what the players said).

Human-Computer AI Collaborative Tournament Gameplay

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