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Serena Booth

@reniebird.bsky.social
2.4K followers 557 following 157 posts

CS Prof at Brown University, PI of the GIRAFFE lab, former AI Policy Advisor in the US Senate, co-chair of the ACM Tech Policy Subcommittee on AI and Algorithms. PhD at MIT CSAIL '23, Harvard '16, former Google APM. Dog mom to Ducki.

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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsijSh... @bradknox.bsky.social, Brian Christian, and I wrote a thing. We argue that an unexamined cause of the Open AI / Hugging Face Attack was the Exploit Gym evaluation metric. We post this on Less Wrong as a plea to practitioners to design better metrics in the future.
lesswrong.com
An unexamined cause of the OpenAI Hugging Face hacking incident: its binary performance metric — LessWrong
We argue that a main cause of the OpenAI Hugging Face incident was overlooked: the overly simple evaluation metric in ExploitGym was misaligned. Furt…
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danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
PhD students (& new PhDs): I'm hiring a postdoc at Cornell (Ithaca) to conduct a novel study at the intersection of political economy and tech. Applications are due Oct 16. There are a LOT more details in the job ad so make sure to read it thoroughly: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32502
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The semester has officially started, which in turn officially means I can't really walk my dog anymore. Because he's always upside down. Asking students to rub his belly. Calls of "I love you Ducki!!!" echo down the street.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 10/09/2026
A new Medicare program uses AI to evaluate prior authorization requests. New records obtained by EFF show that this program has resulted in widespread delays and denials of care, operational chaos, and reports of patients waiting in pain. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
eff.org
New Records Reveal Problems with Medicare’s AI Prior Authorization
EFF sued the government for information a new Medicare program that uses AI to evaluate prior authorization requests for certain medical services. Today, we’re releasing approximately 1,000 pages of
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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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Roosevelt Institute @rooseveltinstitute.org · 24/08/2026
📣 Applications close Wednesday for our Good Life Residency on AI and Finance, in partnership with @datasociety.bsky.social We’re looking for emerging scholars and practitioners interested in how policy can shape AI investment, reduce market concentration, and protect workers’ rights. Apply ⬇️
formstack.io
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
With so much LLM noise out there in the research community, it's been really refreshing to see the research passion on display at #RLC2026. A MuJoCo inspired physical Ant robot! A Katamari-esque environment! New thoughts about how to overcome environment entanglement when you infer a reward fn!
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 02/08/2026
The application for the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship, which places scientists & engineers into roles in Congress and in the Executive Branch, opened today. This program is essential for building technical policy capacity in the US. If interested, apply: fellowshipapp.aaas.org/app/main
fellowshipapp.aaas.org
STPF Application - AAAS
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
In May, I celebrated my first and last flights of the summer, with a little work trip vacation combo. I had some more travel planned, but only easy train and road trips. Anyway, hi from my 3rd flight today and my pen-pen-pen-pen-pen-penultimate flight of the summer 🫠 🫠 🫠 This is a cry for help
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
At Brown, I'm privileged to organize an AI policy summer school where we bring grad students from across the nation together to learn about policymaking. We travel down to DC as a group and learn about policy implementation and careers, and the students conduct meetings with Congressional offices.
A group of 20 people standing together in front of a building
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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
🚨 Job alert: We're hiring a senior researcher for our AI Civics program! This subject-matter expert will be a lead contributor to our ambitious work on civic action and community control over AI. Learn more and apply by July 30! job-boards.greenhouse.io/datasocietyr...
job-boards.greenhouse.io
Senior Researcher, AI Civics
Remote - NYC
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Incredibly proud to mentor Brown undergraduate anthro student Sonya Rashkovan. She's out in Ohio this summer conducting ethnographic research with AFL-CIO and workers (of all sorts!) to study how folks are experiencing AI in work. She participated in a podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...
podcasts.apple.com
Labor In The Land Podcast
News Podcast · Updated Monthly · The official podcast of the North Shore Federation of Labor.
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Seth Rockman @sethrockman.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Scholarly folks who have ever received federal funding: today is the deadline for public comment on proposed revisions that will decimate our national research capacity and replace expertise with political whim. Please consider throwing in your 2¢. See below for some useful links and encouragement.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Another day, another nice "walk" together
Dog lying on its back being dramatic
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Lauren Chambers @laurenmarietta.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
it's the last day of #FAccT2026 in Montreal (bonjour hiii), and I'm presenting my paper with Diag Davenport on the promise of #PublicInterestTech clinics for training the next gen of critical sociotechnical thinkers. 🏆 plus we got an honorable mention!? come thru @ 10:45! 📄 tiny.cc/pit-clinics-26
screenshot of a title slide, navy background with light blue icons and white and gold text: "a decision-making pedagogy for the public interest technology clinic: putting the ‘practice’ in critical technical practice." lauren m. chambers & diag davenport, uc berkeley. facct @ montreal, june 28, 2026
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
We want human preferences to be an objective measure of human values, but this view is not grounded in RLHF practice. Instead, the raters who provide preferences are screened to express certain values and are then trained to provide preferences that adhere to some specific criteria. #FAccT2026
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Policymakers by and large don't read academic papers! If you're looking for policy impact, you need to show up. First you need to learn _how_ to show up. Excited to cohost this #FAccT2026 craft session with @rone.bsky.social, @narijohnson.bsky.social, Cynthia Bailey, and Danaé Metaxa.
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Peter Henderson @peterhenderson.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Forcing people to leave the country to transfer to a green card, will hurt families, communities, and United States innovation. If you aren't aware, adjustment of status can take many months—if not years. I hope this policy is reconsidered.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
My dog has developed the foremost optimal policy for vet visits. His strategy is to act compliant, receiving as many cookies as possible, until the _very_ last second when he pulls away and gets to restart the episode. Today he went through 6 needles before getting a blood draw.
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Still hiring for PhD candidates who are *specifically* excited in building and deploying RL systems for self-driving vehicles and other multi-agent planning settings. Shoot me an email if you think this is you and please help spread the word!
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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Our 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 :)
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Come work with us!
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Very pleased to share our thoughts on AI & labor. @friedler.net, Andrew Schrank, Sue Helper, and I put forth an optimistic vision for the future of AI & work; we argue for a worker-first response to AI. www.brookings.edu/articles/a-p...
brookings.edu
A people-first vision for the future of work in the age of AI | Brookings
Authors discuss how to reimagine work in the age of AI to reverse its degradation and protect the role of people in the workplace.
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Divya Shanmugam @dmshanmugam.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
New in Nature Health: how might we move towards a world in which race is not used in clinical algorithms? We need (1) careful comparison of race-aware and race-neutral algorithms and (2) systemic efforts to address underlying disparities.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Came up with a new talk title I'm super proud of. Catch me talking about "Mitigating Misspecification, Misinterpretation, and Misanthropy in AI," where misanthropy is a catch-all for my work on consumer protection and labor an AI. I'll give this talk at Cornell next week :D :D :D
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
But labor and policy also need to get very serious about responding to this. Especially non-unionized workers are feeling very very alone right now. We need to pursue the promise of the NLRA and actively encourage workers to organize in response to this; to find a pathway to feeling less alone.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Great resource for anyone engaged or interested in US AI policy and governance from @geomblog.bsky.social and his team www.brown.edu/news/2026-03...
brown.edu
Brown University researchers launch AI legislation tracking and analysis portal
As a tool for researchers, lawmakers, journalists and the public, the CNTR AISLE Portal provides analysis of state- and federal-level AI bills pending across the U.S.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
I genuinely don't know how anyone survived university bureaucracies before LLMs. You want a budget justification? Oh I've got a budget justification!!! You want an justification of the time allocation required for my course? I gotchu!
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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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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
It is unfathomable how this problem is so pernicious and dangerous ( www.politico.com/newsletters/...) and still mostly unaddressed
politico.com
How to surveil a federal regulator
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Ben Winters @benwinters.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Thrilled to see this work as well as our urgent warning from last August about X featured in the @energycommerce.bsky.social investigation launched last week democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/evo-su... X has not done enough and those responsible have not yet been held accountable
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Absolutely thrilled to kick off the AFL-CIO North Shore Workers First Summit on Artificial Intelligence after months of planning. We're here today to hear from workers about how they are seeing the early impacts of AI, and to assess interventions to ensure AI improves job quality and agency.
Kickoff for the Workers First Summit in Artificial Intelligence
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
We opened up applications for the Brown AI Policy Summer School! Please share with any computing or computational social science students who want to engage substantively with policymaking in the United States: cntr.brown.edu/summer-school. Deadline March 27th!!! Funding available!
cntr.brown.edu
CNTR Tech & Policy Summer School
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
"And we kissed, as though nothing could fall" -Ducki, probably
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I feel we need a specific word for the incredible sense of awe and wonder you experience watching your friends defend PhD theses in areas you don't understand.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Super excited to be a nonres fellow at CDT!!
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Miranda Bogen @mbogen.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
I've been surprised just how little we've been talking about privacy implications of frontier AI beyond training data. tl;dr -- the architecture of AI systems will matter a lot, and developers can act now to do better. New piece in @technologyreview.com: www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/28/1...
technologyreview.com
What AI “remembers” about you is privacy’s next frontier
Agents’ technical underpinnings create the potential for breaches that expose the entire mosaic of your life.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
We are privileged that the world's best want to work with us and to study at our universities. Who in their right mind would give that up????
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
So cool!
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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 19/01/2026
Posted a very early stage draft with rock star collaborators. Key question: when we actually roll out AI tools, how do people use them? Do they just defer completely? Does it improve productivity and ability? We look in the medical setting of pulmonary embolisms paulgp.com/papers/Radio...
We study how radiologists use AI to diagnose pulmonary embolism (PE), tracking over 100,000
scans interpreted by nearly 400 radiologists during the staggered rollout of an FDA-approved
diagnostic platform. When AI flags PE, radiologists agree 84% of the time; when AI predicts no PE,
they agree 97%. Disagreement evolves substantially: radiologists initially reject AI-positive PEs in
30% of cases, dropping to 12% by year two. Despite a 16% increase in scan volume, diagnostic speed
remains stable while per-radiologist monthly volumes nearly double, with no change in patient
mortality—suggesting AI improves workflow without compromising outcomes. We document
significant heterogeneity in AI collaboration: some radiologists reject AI-flagged PEs half the time
while others accept nearly always; female radiologists are 6 percentage points less likely to override AI
than male radiologists. Moderate AI engagement is associated with the highest agreement, whereas
both low and high engagement show more disagreement. Follow-up imaging reveals that when
radiologists override AI to diagnose PE, 54% of subsequent scans show both agreeing on no PE
within 30 days.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Not sure if this is a coincidence but this is also how my dog celebrated his birthday
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Not sure if this is a coincidence but this is also how my dog celebrated his birthday
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Miranda Bogen @mbogen.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
It's happening. OpenAI is piloting ads in ChatGPT. openai.com/index/our-ap... In introducing ads to ChatGPT, OpenAI is starting down a risky path. (1/5)
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Today I got some (mostly positive, yay!) reviews back for a paper and one of them identified a "gorilla in the room" and another identified an "elephant in the room". So we're planning on letting the gorilla and the elephant duke it out.
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Serena Booth @reniebird.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Instead of using Gemini to write emails, what if, and this is a radical proposal, we just stopped writing emails?
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Ryan Steed @rbsteed.com · 09/01/2026
Late notice, but: NIST has a multi-year, funded graduate fellowship + summer intern program (potentially with our team at CAISI!). Due January 15. stemfellowships.org/applicants/
stemfellowships.org
Applicants
Fellowship Information *** Application is currently OPEN *** Number of Awards: Varies annually  Schedule: Online applications open in late August and close on January 15, 2026. Type: Fellowshi…
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
I was so taken with @cyberlyra.bsky.social 's talk that I had to write an entire blog post (about it, but also about what the talk tells us about imagination and the AI moment). In a totally old-school unfashionable way, I'm not going to soundbite it here. RTWT: cntr.brown.edu/news/2025-12...
cntr.brown.edu
Participatory design, human-AI systems, and imaginaries
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
The ACM has now issued an official statement arguing against a federal moratorium on state AI regulation. www.acm.org/binaries/con...
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Elena Glassman @elglassman.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
We're admitting PhD students! (Possible co-PIs include @zittrain.bsky.social or @ianarawjo.bsky.social if interests align.) We're excited about: docs.google.com/document/d/1... Interested? Fill out the linked form & apply to Harvard SEAS (listing me as faculty of interest) by Dec 15th!
docs.google.com
PhD advert
CS PhD openings @ Harvard HCI’s Variation Lab advised by Prof. Elena Glassman A little history Founded in the fall of 2018, our small group has been a home for some truly terrific interdisciplinary HC...
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Ryan Steed @rbsteed.com · 08/12/2025
Also, our team is hiring an AI Research Scientist! www.usajobs.gov/job/851528400
usajobs.gov
USAJOBS connects job seekers with federal jobs across the United States and around the world as the official employment site for the federal government
<p>NIST works with industry and science to advance innovation and improve quality of life. We're looking for an IT Specialist (AI) to join our team!<br> <br> <a href="https://www.nist.gov/caisi">CAISI...
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