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Catherine Lai

@catlai.bsky.social
3.1K followers 404 following 0 posts

Lecturer in speech and language technology, CSTR, University of Edinburgh. She/her. homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/clai

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Reposted by Catherine Lai
Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.
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The Past and other Places @pastandotherplaces.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"The Incorporation of Goldsmiths of the City of Edinburgh is deeply concerned by the proposed closure of the undergraduate Jewellery and Silversmithing degree at Edinburgh College of Art. We urge the University of Edinburgh to reconsider..." #ECAmatters www.edinburghassayoffice.co.uk/2026/09/28/o...
edinburghassayoffice.co.uk
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
@scariadna.bsky.social is off to Sydney this week to present this work 🛫🐨🗣️ @interspeech.bsky.social goers, do not miss the queer & trans speech science and technology session! wish I could be there for that and @steven-bird.bsky.social keynote 🥹
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
'student representatives have described the proposal as “tone-deaf”, highlighting that two-thirds of undergraduates are now in term-time employment and describing an expectation for them to take on additional labour as “absolutely ridiculous”.'
timeshighereducation.com
Paid employment ‘biggest barrier’ to rolling out work placements
Survey comes after vice-chancellors said they wanted every undergraduate in England to undertake work experience as part of their degree
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Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Worrying scenes in the Channel today, for all interested in asylum policy and maritime tactics. A small boat from Normandy spent more than 30 hours at sea. Those on board now on their 2nd rescue vessel as Border Force forced to play cat and mouse with far-right activists who have their own boat.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026
“our ai broke out and hacked some organisations” = "we failed to set up appropriate safeguards, failed to continuously monitor our experiments, and ignored a basic principle of reinforcement learning: if hacking gets rewarded, the system learns to hack"
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Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 18/09/2026
A further observation: the response to the news is widespread horror and solidarity (which we’re grateful for), but it’s also really interesting to observe the gap between how this looks like from ‘the inside’ vs the outside.
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
every day of my life I think about the people using “she” to describe this computer program who still need to be convinced to use it for trans women
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Melissa Terras @melissaterras.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Apropos of nothing: it would be normal at a modern, responsive uni to offer new courses and deprecate others regularly. But a mass shuttering of courses suggests senior managers haven’t had their eye on the ball when they should have, for quite some time. 😒 Planning? Governance? Accountability?
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Christian Ilbury @christianilbury.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Super excited to share our new article which is *finally* out in Journal of Applied Linguistics, 'Tackling linguistic discrimination in higher education' which is co-authored with former students Grace Mai Clark (93% Club) and Shanley Breese (Scottish Society). academic.oup.com/applij/advan...
academic.oup.com
Tackling linguistic discrimination in higher education: a student-staff collaborative approach
Abstract. The field has long been committed to critically exploring the role of language in systemic inequality and social injustice. More recently, a grow
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WOR$T GIRL IN ACADEMIA @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Once again, the median pay for an adjunct professor in the United States of America is $3,500 per course. Not per month, per course.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026
So while you're thinking about a super human, super "intelligent" alien being killing you, here's what's really happening. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
abc.net.au
Doctor forced to apologise after AI makes 'scary' error about illegal drugs
Artificial Intelligence is listening to many people's medical appointments, but it is not always hearing things correctly.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026
Speaking of plagiarism: www.scientificamerican.com/article/open...
scientificamerican.com
OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say
OpenAI released 10 AI-generated results over the weekend. Some mathematicians are unhappy with their approach
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Ed Morrish @edmorrish.com · 03/09/2026
a lot of people doubted how much the british media genuinely cared about integrity in academia and now is a great chance for the british media to prove that they’re not just gullible racists!
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Rachel Rees @rachel-rees.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
As honoured as I am to see that The Times has picked up my Chagos article practically *word for word*, including my hard-gotten quotes, I’d prefer some credit — or for everyone to read my original FT piece! free link to read the evidently enviable article below (cheaper than a Times sub!) 🌴
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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Back to school. ❤️
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Because Language (becauselangpod) @becauselanguage.com · 22/08/2026
New episode! We constantly use sounds to send out signals about our identity. But what percent are we aware of? Not much! Lauren Hall-Lew @lhlew.bsky.social and Jennifer Nycz @jennycz.bsky.social join us. Wherever podcasts are to be had. becauselanguage.com/144-sociopho... @academic.oup.com
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is egregious BBC bullshit. It’s not only “academics of colour” who know (vs. ‘feel’) that the ferocity of the attacks were due to Arday being Black. Academic dishonesty must have consequences. Tell that to the white academic fakers still with jobs at leading unis who’ve faced nothing like this
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Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
An American interviewer asked me about my political beliefs. #VoteBinface
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
This FT piece by Carmody Grey is an essential read, and worth going over the paywall for it.
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Christian Ilbury @christianilbury.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We're excited to announce the programme for LavLang32, 2-4 September at the University of Edinburgh. It's (potentially?!) the biggest LavLang yet! - 5 Keynotes - 140 attendees - 95 papers The programme showcases the breadth and diversity of queer linguistics research: shorturl.at/6nKn7
shorturl.at
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Seth Kahn (he/him) @badpacifist.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Lots in this post worth reading, but the title is <chef's kiss> and has become one of my mantras.
open.substack.com
If you can't be bothered writing it, I can't be bothered reading it.
The producerist vision of AI seems to assume an endlessly expanding market for reading. And reading. Well. It is rather more than a market.
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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
🧵On @thenewsagents.co.uk yesterday, school closures and the lab leak theory were offered as two examples of legitimate questions that were hard to ask. Both have in fact been asked constantly since 2020. But here's a thread on why I think they were wrong and dangerous on school closures 1/12
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Shiro Sirius @shirosiri.us · 29/07/2026
I don’t want to be too sensationalist about this but also I’m the least violent person in the world and I think if someone said this to my face I’d hit them
"A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information," it continues.
"Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an Al model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated.
The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one."
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Sacrifice! At the Harvest Festival @theharvestmaid.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Why is everything so transparently evil now?
"Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage," it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by
404. "Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools."
Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps Al companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.
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Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Earlier this year UKRI launched a funding call to invest £40M in ONE AI lab. www.ukri.org/opportunity/... For some unknown reason they decided to fund TWO AI labs at the cost of £60M. An extra £20M. Just found. That's the equivalent of 7 more years of Jodrell Bank. www.ukri.org/news/ukri-la...
ukri.org
UKRI launches two AI research labs to stay ahead in global race
Two new labs will back British researchers to develop next generation artificial intelligence (AI) systems, helping secure the UK’s position as a global leader.
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Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 15/07/2026
So this Defence Universities Alliance thing… we do actually need defence capacity but it’s a bit insane that somehow the defence sector still has nothing to do with languages, area studies, history and suchlike. Complete loss of institutional memory. This used to be widely recognised!
Chosen from almost 100 applicants, founding members of the DUA will strengthen connections between academia and the defence sector, helping to support a pipeline of skilled graduates into exciting careers, including cyber security, robotics, Al, aerospace engineering and advanced manufacturing. In doing so, the initiative will ensure young people leave university ready for work, with a bridge between study and employment.
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Would Jenrick also like to explain how £5Mill Farage hawking gold bullion and grifting for crypto and fossil fuel billionaires while pledging to scrap the Equality Act, bin new employment rights and lower the minimum wage is not working for the super rich, against the interests of the rest of us?
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
"The Home Office estimates that the benefits will outweigh the costs, though this can not be evidenced at this time"
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Arthur Snell @snellarthur.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Labour can threaten a £10k charge on migrants and still it’s never enough for the hard right. Perhaps there’s a lesson here? 🤔
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Another stupid Mahmood idea - getting “trained” members of the public to decide asylum cases - is ripped to shreds here by someone who knows what they’re talking about… Politicians have truly lost their minds on immigration. It’s making us a very wretched and angry place.
Asylum appeals
Sir, Muddled government thinking is contlating the law, resources and the judiciary ("Public to decide asylum appeals as Mahmood jettisons judges", Jun 29). Nothing except its own ambivalence prevents a government with a large majority from changing the law on immigration and human rights, and nothing except its own misplaced expenditure priorities prevent it from funding the courts and tribunals system to eliminate the backlogs.
The task of the immigration judiciary is to decide whether, on return to their home country, an asylum seeker faces a real risk of persecution. This can mean torture and death, so immigration judges exercise the nearest that the UK now has to a capital jurisdiction. That responsibility, which I exercised for 20 years, requires accumulated legal training, skill, experience and judgment. Replacing a body of people exercising those proven attributes with one that lacks all of them and will not be operational until the end of next year is nonsensical. It will imperil appellants and will undoubtedly increase the number of applications to the High Court for judicial review. We have only to imagine a proposed crash course for applicants from different backgrounds with no medical knowledge for surgical hospital positions.
Dr Jonathan Lewis
Designated immigration judge (ret'd), Pinner
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Fraser Nelson - rightwing commentator - praises Mahmood for her tough stance on immigration. Alf Dubs - “conscience of the Labour movement” does not. He considers her policies performative and cruel. So, @andyburnham.bsky.social who do you stand with?
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Lauren Hall-Lew (she/her) @lhlew.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Please joining me in supporting this important short film! I would pay to see it in a theatre, therefore I donate. www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/no-identit... #Palestine #Palestinian #Syria #Syrian #Home #Identity #IndependentFilm #film #support #donate
crowdfunder.co.uk
No Identity - بلا هوية (Short Film)
Support the production of No Identity, a graduation short film from ENU that tells a powerful story of identity and belonging.
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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Truly bizarre story of how two papers from the 1940s by physics pioneer Max Planck have been "retracted" from Naturwissenschaften, potentially by an algorithm, for anachronistic "plagiarism" issues, leaving the current editor baffled (but it is Springer Nature so.... www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted?
Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck. A bot may be to blame
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Proud to present the preprint of our @interspeech.bsky.social accepted paper: exploring the personas invoked by "flirty" and "temptress" (Elevenlabs' labels, not ours!) AI voices with @scariadna.bsky.social @elinkanhov.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social and Éva Székely 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2606.21366
arxiv.org
Sexualised synthetic personas encode and amplify gendered power asymmetries through voice
This work examines sexualised AI-generated English-speaking voices offered by a popular commercial platform. New technologies may enable sexual empowerment and greater diversity in gender expression, ...
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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
lol universities famously unrelated to economy, public services and immigration
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chelsea bridge 🩸 @secretaboutbox.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
IF YOU SEE THIS CLOSE THE TAB IMMEDIATELY this is a trick to install malware on your machine. it is not a real captcha system.
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Lighthouse Reports @lighthousereports.com · 18/06/2026
Britain will use AI to assess ages of asylum seekers in a world-first, with other countries likely to follow suit But our investigation, based on a leaked report and our own algorithmic audit, finds the technology is deeply unreliable
lighthousereports.com
Asylum by Algorithm
The UK has turned to AI to determine the age of asylum seekers, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Our investigation finds the technology is deeply unreliable.
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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Something similar to. 3 just happened to me. One of my articles was credited to Yuval Noah Harari in a published paper! The authors say they are fixing this citation and other hallucinated ones...
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Reading this thread I simply cannot fathom the speed with which some scholars *resign* their vocation the moment the option to defer to AI arises. I fought many years for the privilege to write and teach. Even if AI *could* do my job (it can’t) they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands
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Dr Fern Riddell @drfernriddell.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
But that is exactly how the suffragettes operated. With a nationwide organisation of sleeper cells of arsonists and bombers. I’m gratefully people have reached out and referenced my work today. I remain (I believe) the only academic expert on the terrorism of the suffragettes. Links below:
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
I am going to continue to push back on "high skill migration" even if I am the last dead ender. The UK has a much more pressing shortage of low-skill labour than high-skill labour. We have people giving up jobs as magic circle lawyers to take care of their parents.
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Because Language (becauselangpod) @becauselanguage.com · 14/06/2026
(available in our shop) becauselanguage.com/shop/
Drawing of a person on a hill.
Text: Don't die on grammar hills
Sit at the top
Pick the grammar dandelions 
Feel the grammar wind 
on your grammar face
And touch the grammar grass
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Delighted that our paper's been accepted for Interspeech '26 🐨 We looked at how sexualised TTS (so-called "Voice AI") voices can encode gendered power asymmetries and straight values 😪 it was a wild ride w/ @scariadna.bsky.social, @elinkanhov.bsky.social, @catlai.bsky.social & the great Éva Székely!
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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 03/06/2026
Reflecting on a conversation with my students about AI in teaching. The promise of AI is infinite productivity, at infinite speed. But the implicit promise of teaching is that an expert will give you some of their very *finite* time. You are important enough that your instructor will incur a loss.
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"AI is operating at a PhD level" oh, so it's replying 'sorry for the late response' to every email and complaining about its labor conditions?
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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 03/06/2026
Fantastic and important reporting by Siobhan Roberts in the NYT. 🧮 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/s...
To think of mathematics in terms of precise and neatly stated problems, like high school exams or the list of Erdos problems, is to misunderstand and diminish what makes mathematics so powerful and significant. Mathematics is not just about solving problems — it is also the cultivation of ideas, understanding, judgment, and human insight.We want to affirm certain values that have characterized the profession: openness, honesty, giving credit where credit is due, sharing, transparency about methodologies, and access for independent verification of results.

An aspect of mathematics that is cherished by mathematicians is that it is one of few successful examples of a gift economy — that is to say, its economy is somehow an island of idealism in our society. As director of graduate studies in the mathematics department at Columbia, I read the personal statements of all the applicants every year, several hundred, and they are still idealists.

The tech industry proceeds in accordance with commercial logic, which is antithetical to the values of mathematics.This situation has put mathematicians in a troubling ethical position. Without their consent, their published work is being used as strategic training data for the development of general-purpose A.I. The resulting models are being commercialized for many purposes, including military applications, that raise grave ethical concerns. Most mathematicians never imagined, much less consented, that their work would be used for such purposes.OCHIGAME Mathematics is a rich form of cultural expression with an ancient history, and I am not worried that any technology will ever render it obsolete. Its most precious aspects, such as the collective quest to understand beautifully intricate ideas, and to explore the limits of the human imagination, cannot ever be automated. What I am worried about is that a handful of corporations are mobilizing their vast financial resources to impose an impoverished view of mathematics so forcefully — at a moment when scientific research is already under political attack — that they may well end up destroying the social institutions that allow mathematics to flourish. What could be futile about resisting that?
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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 30/05/2026
I fucking warned people about this shit. The AI is picking up stylistic conventions in writing, the literal patterns that disciplines conform to, and not the content of the work. This is not dissimilar from AI flagging my own writing as AI generated.
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