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Michelle L. Ding

@michelleding.bsky.social
125 followers 81 following 33 posts

researcher/organizer critically investigating how AI systems impact communities. cs phd @ brown cntr. she/her. 🌷 michelle-ding.github.io 💭 michellelding.substack.com

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Reposted by Michelle L. Ding
Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I answered 5 questions for @politico.com www.politico.com/newsletters/...
politico.com
5 Questions for Suresh Venkatasubramanian
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Victor Ojewale @victorojewale.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Given the sudden push from AI companies for embedded evaluators, I shared a few reflections on who gets to evaluate AI systems and why we need an evaluation ecosystem rather than one “perfect” independent evaluator. victorojewale.substack.com/p/everyone-w...
victorojewale.substack.com
Everyone Wants Independent AI Evaluations. Independent From Whom?
Why access alone cannot deliver accountability and why AI needs an evaluation ecosystem, not one trusted evaluator
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Reposted by Michelle L. Ding
Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
An assessment of the last year of AI policy drama, from @reniebird.bsky.social and myself: governmenttechnologyinsider.com/a-year-of-ai...
governmenttechnologyinsider.com
A Year of AI Policy Whiplash  - Government Technology Insider
One year ago, the debate over the AI moratorium dominated Washington’s technology agenda. At the White House’s urging, Congress considered legislation that would have prevented states from drafting or...
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Victor Ojewale @victorojewale.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Most Multilingual benchmarks measure what models know, not what they can reliably do. Our #ACL2026 paper introduces functional benchmarks in six languages from English to Yoruba to test whether models can actually execute tasks across languages, not just answer fixed questions about them. 🧵1/n
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Part IV: So what do we do? Don't overindex on one episode — that breeds the whack-a-mole regulation that's been harmful in other settings: @michelleding.bsky.social @harinisuresh.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2602.04759
arxiv.org
How to Stop Playing Whack-a-Mole: Mapping the Ecosystem of Technologies Facilitating AI-Generated Non-Consensual Intimate Images
The last decade has witnessed a rapid advancement of generative AI technology that significantly scaled the accessibility of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images (AIG-NCII), a form of image-bas...
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Reposted by Michelle L. Ding
Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Anthropic just shut access to Fable & Mythos, their most powerful models. I wrote up what happened + the policy and psychodrama behind it (with all the links & receipts) here — the thread below is the TL;DR 🧵 blog.geomblog.org/2026/06/the-...
blog.geomblog.org
The "fable" of Anthropic and the USG
News moves fast. 12 hours ago I was enjoying the demolition that the US put on Paraguay when I heard that Anthropic had shut down access to ...
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Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org
The gorgeous AI Resist List homepage
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Reposted by Michelle L. Ding
Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Tech Policy Press fellow Petra Molnar highlights the AI Resist List: a global database documenting acts of resistance to the AI industry. From legal challenges and worker organizing to artistic interventions, the project seeks to challenge the “scale at all costs” development of AI.
buff.ly
The World Is Already Resisting AI. Now, There is a List to Prove It.
Petra Molnar spotlights the launch of the AI Resist List, documenting global challenges to AI expansion.
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Fantastic thread by @michelleding.bsky.social about her new (and difficult) work on addressing deepfake abuse.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
💐 Super excited to finally share this project that I've been working on for the past year with my wonderful advisors @harinisuresh.bsky.social and @geomblog.bsky.social 📃 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2602.04759  🧩 More toolkits & media to come
arxiv.org
How to Stop Playing Whack-a-Mole: Mapping the Ecosystem of Technologies Facilitating AI-Generated Non-Consensual Intimate Images
The last decade has witnessed a rapid advancement of generative AI technology that significantly scaled the accessibility of AI-generated non-consensual intimate images (AIG-NCII), a form of image-bas...
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Overall, we recommend for researchers to adopt a relational approach to researching AIG-NCII by investigating the relationship between technologies in the ecosystem and the ripple effects that interventions may have.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
💡 Our ecosystem unveils new, critical open questions for researchers... 1) What models are used to power the AI nudifier applications? How do we trace accountability upstream? 2) How do developer platform policies (e.g. CivitAI's likeness ban) result in ripple effects across the ecosystem?
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
💡 Use Case #2: Understanding New Incidents of Harm Last Dec, Grok was generating thousands of AIG-NCII per hour. We use our ecosystem to code and piece together different breaking headlines to better understand new incidents of harm.
Five Grok-related news articles and the technologies they discuss
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
💡 Use Case #1: Mapping the Tech Policy Landscape We manually read 60+ U.S. federal/state laws and coded them with our ecosystem. We found that a vast majority of laws target individuals. Only 1 federal law and 6 state laws target technologies in our ecosystem.
The landscape of U.S. federal and state laws regulating the AIG-NCII ecosystem. Laws included: Federal Law - The TAKE IT DOWN Act (2025); 1. California - SB981 (2024); 2. New York - A8808 (2024); 3.
Tennessee - H0769 (2025); 4. Arkansas - HB1529 (2025); 5. Texas - SB441 (2025); 6. Minnesota - HF1606 (2026). Each state is labeled with icons of regulated technologies and color-coded with the role of the technology in the ecosystem.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
We built the first ecosystem of technologies facilitating AIG-NCII through a synthesis of 100+ primary sources across a decade from researchers, journalists, advocates, policymakers, and technologists.
Taxonomy of Technologies and their Roles in the AIG-NCII EcosystemThe ecosystem of technologies that facilitate AI-generated non-consensual intimate images (AIG-NCII) via A. Creation (training datasets, generative AI models, and generative AI interfaces), B. Distribution
(distribution channels), C. Proliferation & Discovery (deepfake creation communities, search engines, 7. advertisement platforms, app stores), D. Infrastructural Support (developer platforms, critical service providers),
and E. Monetization (payment processors).
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Deepfake abuse is an urgent crisis that harms and silences millions of adults and children around the world. It is powered not just by a single model, app, or website, but by a vast, interconnected, and ever-evolving technological ecosystem that has yet to be fully understood.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
How do we stop playing whack-a-mole when it comes to deepfake abuse? 🧵⚠️
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
It's been a journey of nearly 3 years, but I'm very excited to announce the CNTR AISLE Portal! 🚀 cntr-aisle.org It’s a new way to review and evaluate the 1,000+ AI bills introduced in the U.S. over the last three years. Check out the Bill Library and our Profiles#AIPolicy #OpenData
cntr-aisle.org
CNTR AISLE
CNTR AISLE Portal
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RJ Yew @r-jy.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
The Commodification of AI Sovereignty: Lessons from the Fight for Sovereign Oil (with Kate E. Creasey, Taylor Lynn Curtis, and @geomblog.bsky.social), is out now on arXiv: www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.11763.
Left: 1942 "War Map" produced by Esso, now ExxonMobil, charting oil's role in transportation as  "key to victory". Right: 2024 map produced by NVIDIA as part of an investor presentation slide deck describing its involvement in sovereign AI efforts globally. On the left panel: "Nations are awakening to the imperative to produce artificial intelligence using their own infrastructure, data workforces and business networks."
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ACLU @aclu.org · 10/01/2026
We released a new report in partnership with the Center for Tech Responsibility at Brown University on how policymakers and researchers can better analyze AI legislation to protect our civil rights and liberties.
techpolicy.press
Making Sense of AI Policy Using Computational Tools | TechPolicy.Press
A new report examines how to use computational tools to evaluate policy, with AI policy as a case study.
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 09/01/2026
Today on @indicator.media's free weekly briefing: The staggering impunity of xAI, which turned its abusive image generator on its own users in full view and has barely done anything to contain it.
indicator.media
Briefing: Grok brings nonconsensual image abuse to the masses
Plus: a new feature in the Meta Ad Library and a new Telegram investigation tool.
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
New post by @michelleding.bsky.social on resources for the Brown community in the aftermath of the shooting. open.substack.com/pub/michelle...
open.substack.com
Caring for yourself and each other
Resources for the Brown community, friends, family, loved ones and how to support us
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
@mantzarlis.com and folks at @indicator.media have done incredible reporting & investigation on the AI nudification ecosystem that I'm constantly citing in my research on AIG-NCII - appreciate all the work you do!
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Very glad to be a part of a new paper detailing how developers and developer platforms can prevent AIG-NCII, a form of image based sexual abuse that disproportionately harms women and girls. Thanks to all the collaborators and Max Kamachee & @scasper.bsky.social for leading this important project!
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Reposted by Michelle L. Ding
Cas (Stephen Casper) @scasper.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Thanks to collaborators! This was a really interesting paper for me to work on, and it took a special group of interdisciplinary people to get it done. Max Kamachee @r-jy.bsky.social @michelleding.bsky.social @ankareuel.bsky.social @stellaathena.bsky.social @dhadfieldmenell.bsky.social
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Spotify thought i was 87 if that makes you feel better
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
ACM members/computing researchers who should be members interested in contributing should join the subcommittee's mailing list! One of our goals here is to build policy coalitions across institutions so we can do more as a collective 💪 and balance special interest groups.
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
@reniebird.bsky.social and I have just been appointed to co-Chair @TheOfficialACM's US Technology Policy Committee’s Subcommittee on AI and Algorithms. cs.brown.edu/news/2025/11...
cs.brown.edu
Serena Booth And Suresh Venkatasubramanian Co-Chair ACM’s US Technology Policy Committee’s Subcommittee On AI And Algorithms
Brown CS faculty members Serena Booth and Suresh Venkatasubramanian have just been appointed to co-chair the AI and Algorithms Subcommittee, whose recent work includes responses to government RFIs, te...
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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
PSA: tips to protect yourself from scams on Signal. Every major comms platform has to contend w phishing, impersonation, & scams. Sadly. Signal is major, and as we've grown we've heard about more of these attacks--scammy people pretending to be something or someone to trick and abuse others. 1/
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Alexios Mantzarlis @mantzarlis.com · 23/10/2025
Today on @indicator.media: A first-of-its-kind audit of AI labels on major social platforms.
indicator.media
Tech platforms promised to label AI content. They're not delivering.
An Indicator audit of hundreds of synthetic images and videos reveals that platforms frequently fail to label AI content
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RJ Yew @r-jy.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Technologies like synthetic data, evaluations, and red-teaming are often framed as enhancing AI privacy and safety. But what if their effects lie elsewhere? In a new paper with @realbrianjudge.bsky.social at #EAAMO25, we pull back the curtain on AI safety's toolkit. (1/n) arxiv.org/pdf/2509.22872
arxiv.org
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
I wrote a (personal) blog post about my hopes and dreams for AI policy, my devastation after the US Election, and my process of picking myself off the floor by rebuilding an optimistic vision for AI scientists in government through education: simons.berkeley.edu/news/rebuild...
simons.berkeley.edu
Rebuilding an Optimistic Vision for AI Policy
Recall November 6, 2024 — the day after the U.S. election. I was driving back to my home in Washington, DC, from Ohio with colleagues. I was heartbroken not because of the rebuke to my political party...
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Grey background with CNTR logo and black text that says:

Testing LLMs in a sandbox isn’t responsible. Focusing on community uses and needs is. 

Michelle L. Ding, Jo Gasior-Kavishe, Victor Ojewale, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Third Workshop on Socially Responsible Language Modelling Research (SoLaR) 2025
Full abstract available here bit.ly/solar-cntr 

Photos of authors in order of names above

Brown Data Science Institute, Center for Technological Repsonsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
More resources here: bit.ly/solar-cntr 🌱 Happy to chat with anyone interested in learning more!
Grey background with black text that says:

Slide 1: What can you do as a researcher?
Look into your local community - develop sustainable, long term partnerships with city-level or state-level coalitions, networks, news agencies, or non-profit organizations that do on the ground work to discover harms
University researchers – look beyond your department into other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to ground your research in interdisciplinary methods
Industry researchers – look towards trust & safety teams, policy teams, human rights teams and establish collaborations where research reflects real uses. Or advocate to (re)establish these teams.


Slide 2: Contribute to a crowdsourced, open source database: bit.ly/solar-cntr

Case studies are a great way for us to share, learn, teach, and reflect on methods together. 
At SoLaR 2025, we hope to crowdsource a spreadsheet of community-driven LLM evaluation case studies that orient us towards contextualized, participatory, expertise driven evaluations. 
Please add any your own or related work to our spreadsheet :) And let’s stay connected! We also have a tab for contact info!
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Brown background with CNTR logo with white text that says:

Responsibility is not marginally improving LLMs to fit every use case.

Responsibility is knowing when to use them and when not to.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Brown background with CNTR logo with white text that says:

In LLM evaluations, we - researchers - are not the experts. 

We are the facilitators…

…who enable communities to evaluate LLMs for themselves

When we allow their expertise and lived experiences to guide our methodology…

We will organically develop more meaningful scientific insights…

And escape the vicious cycle of abstract benchmarks that only serve to misdirect and confuse us.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Thank you everyone who came to our talk! Here are some highlights:
Brown background and CNTR logo with white text that says:

Community-driven evaluations yield good scientific insights. 

They strip away marketing, hype, and unnecessary abstractions

And reveal the contexts where LLMs might genuinely add value and where they do not.

This opens space for meaningful dialogue between stakeholders across academia, industry, government, and civil society

And empowers the public to engage with and assess for themselves whether the tools they are being presented with can be used responsibly.
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Valentina Pyatkin @valentinapy.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
💡We kicked off the SoLaR workshop at #COLM2025 with a great opinion talk by @michelleding.bsky.social & Jo Gasior Kavishe (joint work with @victorojewale.bsky.social and @geomblog.bsky.social ) on "Testing LLMs in a sandbox isn't responsible. Focusing on community use and needs is."
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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 11/06/2025
Have you or a loved one been misgendered by an LLM? How can we evaluate LLMs for misgendering? Do different evaluation methods give consistent results? Check out our preprint led by the newly minted Dr. @arjunsubgraph.bsky.social, and with Preethi Seshadri, Dietrich Klakow, Kai-Wei Chang, Yizhou Sun
arxiv.org
Agree to Disagree? A Meta-Evaluation of LLM Misgendering
Numerous methods have been proposed to measure LLM misgendering, including probability-based evaluations (e.g., automatically with templatic sentences) and generation-based evaluations (e.g., with aut...
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Elinor @elinorpd.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Excited to share my work: An AI-Powered Framework for Analyzing Collective Idea Evolution in Deliberative Assemblies 🤖🗳️ I’ll be presenting this at @colmweb.org in the NLP4Democracy workshop! 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2509.12577
arxiv.org
An AI-Powered Framework for Analyzing Collective Idea Evolution in Deliberative Assemblies
In an era of increasing societal fragmentation, political polarization, and erosion of public trust in institutions, representative deliberative assemblies are emerging as a promising democratic forum...
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Read our full opinion abstract here: cntr.brown.edu/news/2025-09...
cntr.brown.edu
Testing LLMs in a sandbox isn’t responsible. Focusing on community use and needs is.
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Hi #COLM2025! 🇨🇦 I will be presenting a talk on the importance of community-driven LLM evaluations based on an opinion abstract I wrote with Jo Kavishe, @victorojewale.bsky.social and @geomblog.bsky.social tomorrow at 9:30am in 524b for solar-colm.github.io Hope to see you there!
solar-colm.github.io
Third Workshop on Socially Responsible Language Modelling Research (SoLaR) 2025
COLM 2025 in-person Workshop, October 10th at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal, Canada
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Very excited to be part of this new AI Institute that is being led by Ellie Pavlick @brown.edu and to be able to work with so many experts, including @datasociety.bsky.social www.brown.edu/news/2025-07...
brown.edu
Brown University to lead national institute focused on intuitive, trustworthy AI assistants
A new institute, based at Brown and supported by a $20 million National Science Foundation grant, will convene researchers to guide development of a new generation of AI assistants for use in mental a...
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
I'll be presenting a position paper about consumer protection and AI in the US at ICML. I have a surprisingly optimistic take: our legal structures are stronger than I anticipated when I went to work on this issue in Congress. Is everything broken rn? Yes. Will it stay broken? That's on us.
A poster for the paper "Position: Strong Consumer Protection is an Inalienable Defense for AI Safety in the United States"
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
With their 'Sovereignty as a Service' offerings, tech companies are encouraging the illusion of a race for sovereign control of AI while being the true powers behind the scenes, write Rui-Jie Yew, Kate Elizabeth Creasey, Suresh Venkatasubramanian.
techpolicy.press
'Sovereignty' Myth-Making in the AI Race | TechPolicy.Press
Tech companies stand to gain by encouraging the illusion of a race for 'sovereign' AI, write Rui-Jie Yew, Kate Elizabeth Creasey, Suresh Venkatasubramanian.
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Very excited to see this piece out in @techpolicypress.bsky.social today. This was written together with @r-jy.bsky.social and Kate Elizabeth Creasey (a historian here at Brown), and calls out what we think is a scary and interesting rhetorical shift. www.techpolicy.press/sovereignty-...
techpolicy.press
'Sovereignty' Myth-Making in the AI Race | TechPolicy.Press
Tech companies stand to gain by encouraging the illusion of a race for 'sovereign' AI, write Rui-Jie Yew, Kate Elizabeth Creasey, Suresh Venkatasubramanian.
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
So the EU AI Act passed. Companies have to comply. AI regulation is here to stay. Right? Right? FAccT 2025 paper with @r-jy.bsky.social and Bill Marino (not on bsky) 📜 incoming! 1/n arxiv.org/abs/2506.01931
arxiv.org
Red Teaming AI Policy: A Taxonomy of Avoision and the EU AI Act
The shape of AI regulation is beginning to emerge, most prominently through the EU AI Act (the "AIA"). By 2027, the AIA will be in full effect, and firms are starting to adjust their behavior in light...
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Victor Ojewale @victorojewale.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Excited to present "Towards AI Accountability Infrastructure: Gaps and Opportunities in AI Audit Tooling" at #CHI2025 tomorrow(today)! 🗓 Tue, 29 Apr | 9:48–10:00 AM JST (Mon, 28 Apr | 8:48–9:00 PM ET) 📍 G401 (Pacifico North 4F) 📄 dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
all welcomes are good welcomes even with a 4 year delay 👍
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Michelle L. Ding @michelleding.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
lol
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