Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026New paper in Nature Communications! We show you can map out urban flooding by using vision-language models to detect floods in large-scale street scene datasets. In New York City, our method identifies flooded neighborhoods, home to 100k people, that current methods miss. 1/ 1122
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 22/06/2026New piece in The Atlantic! We always hear that AI will cure cancer, and I would immediately benefit if it did. Still, I argue that racing ahead on generalist AI models creates unclear benefits for cancer that are outweighed by broader societal harms. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2... 1267
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 21/06/2026My piece is not "pro-cancer". I have a very high risk of cancer, and have watched family members die of it. The piece argues that pushing AI forward at this speed creates unclear benefits for cancer that are outweighed by broader societal harms. Gift link - www.theatlantic.com/technology/2... 4460
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 14/04/2026Our lab, within the Berkeley EECS department, is hiring a postdoc! More info and quick application form: forms.gle/4CcESe1TGFoo... Apply by May 1! Please reshare :) 031
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 26/02/2026Our paper, "What's in My Human Feedback", received an oral presentation at ICLR! Our method automatically+interpretably identifies preferences in human feedback data; we use this to improve personalization + safety. Reach out if you have data/use cases to apply this to! arxiv.org/pdf/2510.26202 0283
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 05/02/2026Now out in Nature Communications - we have released a migration dataset that is - 4000x more granular than existing public data - highly correlated with Census data - being used by >100 academic, govt, and non-profit teams all over the world See @gsagostini.bsky.social's thread! 2181
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 04/02/2026Finding #3: Respondents were more comfortable with the use of race than with widely-proposed alternatives like zipcode or income. Said one respondent: "What does my paycheck have to do with a genetic mutation?" Don't assume switching to these factors will automatically improve trust. 161
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 04/02/2026Finding #1: Most respondents were comfortable with the use of race in at least some circumstances. This highlights a gap between calls to eliminate uses of race in medicine and public opinion. 121
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 24/11/2025See the paper for many robustness checks and discussion of nuances! Our finding persists when using alternate outcomes, statistical models, subsets of the data, and controls satisfying the criteria above. 5/ 110
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 24/11/2025We have a new paper in Science Advances proposing a simple test for bias: Is the same person treated differently when their race is perceived differently? Specifically, we study: is the same driver likelier to be searched by police when they are perceived as Hispanic rather than white? 1/ 24316
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 22/08/2025🚨 New postdoc position in our lab at Berkeley EECS! 🚨 (please reshare) We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences! More info in thread 1/3 12112
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 28/03/2025Migration data is critical in the health, environmental, and social sciences. We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is: - 4600x more granular than existing public data - highly correlated with external ground-truth data 1/2 2294
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 18/03/2025We have a new method, HypotheSAEs, for identifying *interpretable text features that predict a target variable* (aka hypothesis generation). What features of a headline predict engagement? What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer? 1/ 181
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 14/01/2025New piece in Nature: @leahpierson.bsky.social and I argue that philanthropic funders should shield science from cuts the Trump administration may make to climate science, infectious disease, etc. Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts 2167
Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Our article on using LLMs to promote health equity is out in New England Journal of Medicine AI! 85% of equity-related LLM papers focus on *harms*. But also vital are the equity-related *opportunities* LLMs create: detecting bias, extracting structured data, and improving access to health info. 1277