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Steven Bird 🍉

@steven-bird.bsky.social
269 followers 253 following 45 posts

Living and working with First Nations people who are keeping their ancestral languages strong. He/they. 📍Larrakia, Bininj, and Miriwoong country linktr.ee/stevenbird

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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
_Supporting and Performing Culture from the Inside_, my EMNLP Findings paper with @lea-frermann.bsky.social. We apply the emic/etic distinction to NLP, covering task selection, data, system design, and evaluation. We suggest some ways towards a more culturally-attuned NLP. arxiv.org/abs/2609.32281
arxiv.org
Supporting and Performing Culture from the Inside
Anthropology and related disciplines which study culture have often found it useful to consider their epistemological and methodological approaches in terms of emic versus etic. This is the distinctio...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Also happy to take one, ideally from a linguistic minority. openreview.net/profile?id=%...
openreview.net
Verifying your browser | OpenReview
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
As if we need more monitoring by AI
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I hope y'all bitchin about "they" being plural and not a grammatical way to refer to an individual are just as vehemently insisting to Apple Inc. that their use of "passwords" is ungrammatical? ... password *is*, passwords *are* 😉
Icon saying "Passwords Is Locked"
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
The story is behind a paywall
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Um, wasn't it for lying under oath?
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Reposted by Steven Bird 🍉
The Tattooed Historian @tattooedhistorian.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Support our libraries!
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Where is the pride in leading a country if you've been bought? Where's the self respect? How to squander a mandate. What an abuse of trust. What a disappointment is @albomp
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Multiple interacting rises are being accelerated by Big AI, and this is being enabled by technocrats who are just doing their job. Read my ACL 2026 preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.24863 #metacrisis #polycrisis #bigAI #nlproc
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
bit.ly/bird-acl26-m...
bit.ly
Bird26-Big_AI_is_Accelerating_the_Metacrisis.pdf
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
I make this point in my forthcoming ACL'26 paper "Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?"
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
What has happened to the gender balance in Computational Linguistics / Natural Language Processing with the arrival of LLMs and a veritable army of engineers and their massive machinery? Is CL/NLP becoming a new male-dominated clubhouse? NB: Unlocking the Clubhouse, Fisher & Margolis. #nlproc #nlp
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Is that a fact?
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Reposted by Steven Bird 🍉
Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
there is something deeply ironic about the fact that computational linguistics has apperently turned out to be very very important for the current socio-technical situation (derogatory) at the same moment that everyone is like "eh, languages are useless"
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Reposted by Steven Bird 🍉
Big Data & Society @bigdatasoc.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
✨ New in Big Data & Society ✨ "'Missing Standardization': Identifying harmful language ideologies in natural language processing work” by Melissa Gasparotto. 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #NLP #languageideologies #Indigenousdatasovereignty
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Victim blaming... Muslims praying, women wearing miniskirts, whatever, they're just asking to be assaulted and have no one but themselves to blame.
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Reposted by Steven Bird 🍉
Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Ban addictive designs, ban illegal content, regulate companies. Don't ban teenagers from digital platforms www.ft.com/content/cf46...
ft.com
Can Europe get kids off social media?
[FREE TO READ] Move follows Australia’s decision to introduce age restrictions over child safety concerns
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
University library (not sure if this says more about students or librarians)
Missing urinal with an out of order sign
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
A reader tells me that calling out Big AI corporations is "brutal". Not the conduct of those corporations. Not the existential crises. Not the full participation of technocrats. Not the tyranny of kleptocrats and plutocrats. No, me writing about it, joining some dots 🙄 arxiv.org/abs/2512.24863
Big AI, the Metacrisis, and Technofeudalism
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
NB:
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Another take on this: www.arxiv.org/abs/2512.24863
arxiv.org
Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?
The world is in the grip of ecological, meaning, and language crises which are converging into a metacrisis. Big AI is accelerating them all. Language engineers are playing a central role, persisting ...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
A national flag should represent unity and sovereignty. Our Australian flag does neither, with its colonial Union Jack and its co-option as an emblem of white supremacy and racial hatred. #ChangeTheFlag
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
NB www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t...
urbandictionary.com
Urban Dictionary: Palin's Principle
Palin's Principle: Learn to speak the original language of the place where you live. (After Sarah Palin who said "When you're in America, speak American!)
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
It is speech communities that decide whether to maintain their languages or to shift to a locally dominant language. AI is largely negative because the amount of training data is typically a millionth of what we have for major languages. AI requires standardised writing, which usually doesn't exist.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
NB aclanthology.org/2024.acl-lon...
aclanthology.org
Must NLP be Extractive?
Steven Bird. Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2024.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Of possible interest, @natehagens.bsky.social @tgspodcast.bsky.social
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24863
arxiv.org
Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?
The world is in the grip of ecological, meaning, and language crises which are converging into a metacrisis. Big AI is accelerating them all. Language engineers are playing a central role, persisting ...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
doi.org/10.1162/coli...
doi.org
Large Language Models Are Biased Because They Are Large Language Models
Abstract. This position paper’s primary goal is to provoke thoughtful discussion about the relationship between bias and fundamental properties of large language models (LLMs). I do this by seeking to...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
... cultural heritage – and something we should all celebrate. They are intertwined with Country and identity, and help to keep our communities strong." – The Hon Tony Burke MP, Minister for the Arts; The Hon Linda Burney MP, Minister for Indigenous Australians www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/i... 2/2
arts.gov.au
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
"It is a great privilege, unique to Australians, to exist with and alongside millennia of knowledge belonging to the oldest continuing cultures in the world. The hundreds of languages spoken by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the continent are central to this rich ... 1/2
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
What if "AI" is defined as GenAI + hype + Big Tech + oligarchs + undermined polities + ...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Apparently GenAI is going to save a lot of languages from extinction. How exactly? Like this? Has tech ever saved a language? If not, why do people keep making this grandoise claim as though it was self-evident? Perhaps it is speech communities that save languages. aclanthology.org/2020.coling-...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
I'm wondering why the treatment of gig workers is invisible here @catiemcleod.bsky.social ? It's as though price is everything and humanity is nothing.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
PhD scholarship: Safeguarding Australia's Indigenous languages in the AI era. For Australian students with preference to First Nations Australians, working on the ground with remote communities in northern Australia. Likely March deadline for study beginning mid-year. Contact steven.bird@cdu.edu.au.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
@ninamarkl.bsky.social @tisjune.bsky.social @steven-bird.bsky.social
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
I covet your thoughts on this @ninamarkl.bsky.social @mmitchell.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @tisjune.bsky.social @barbaraplank.bsky.social @jurafsky.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social @katecrawford.bsky.social @tomslee.net @abeba.bsky.social @jacquelinerowe.bsky.social
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do? Read my four-page article, presented in multiple NLP conference keynotes in 2024, rejected by multiple ACL venues in 2025. Newly updated with 7 proposals for what we can do differently. What do you think? Let's discuss! arxiv.org/abs/2512.24863
arxiv.org
Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?
The world is in the grip of ecological, meaning, and language crises which are converging into a metacrisis. Big AI is accelerating them all. Language engineers are playing a central role, persisting ...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Reading the AI ethics literature feels like doomscrolling the most outrageous newsfeed. It flips from the sanguine to the alarming, from infuriating algorithmic solutionism to disturbing insights, trapping attention for days on end. Has anyone talked about the harms of exploring AI harms? 😵‍💫
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Dan McQuillan? www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDOU...
youtube.com
From AI Policy To Decomputing
YouTube video by Resisting AI
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
ACL terminology: "Paper" = anything with lots of tables with numbers. "Position paper" = anything critical or just deeper. I propose: "Paper" = intellectual contribution. "Engineering paper" = anything purely technocratic.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
We Don't Trust Those Mobiles: critical reflections on generative AI for minoritised languages and new ways forward. Presentation delivered at LT4All (Paris, February 2025) #IndigenousLanguages #firstvoices #NLP #ethics bit.ly/bird-lt4all-...
bit.ly
bird-lt4all-we-dont-trust-those-mobiles.mp4
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Thanks Will! It appeared in the ACL'24 proceedings. This post of mine was a repost from X/Twitter 6 months ago.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
That's really interesting how you could normalise the disfluencies to get to something more readily translatable, and that this simulates what humans seem to be doing subconsciously.
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
For more of this story, please watch the 10 minute intro video, or dive into my ACL'24 paper "Must NLP be Extractive?" What do you think? Please let me know in the comments. 5/5 bit.ly/bird-must-nl... aclanthology.org/2024.acl-lon...
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
There are other ways of thinking about what language *is*. Our epistemology of language affects how we approach language technologies. The first wave and second waves of symbolic and subsymbolic NLP are familiar. I believe a third wave is emerging: Relational Language Processing. 4/5
A table listing epistemologies, axiologies, teleologies, ideologies, etc of different paradigms of NLP
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
When we do this, something interesting comes up: relationality. Language is intrinsically social, inseparable from culture, society, or nature. Language both reflects and creates context. This exceeds narrow epistemologies of "language as lexicogrammatical code", or "language as sequence data". 3/5
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
I find it instructive to look at Indigenous societies, who are guarding their agency in the face of relentless pressures from outside, enacting their sovereignty in shaping their lives, landscapes, and languages. We who increasingly cede our agency to AI may have something to learn. 2/5
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Generative AI extracts behavioural data and takes over human agency. Augmentative Intelligence carefully enhances human agency. What would it be like to take this other fork, and seek a path towards a non-extractive NLP committed to augmentative solutions? 🧵(updated from Twitter/X Aug'24) 1/5
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Steven Bird 🍉 @steven-bird.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Language Technology and the Metacrisis, my keynote presentation at ALTA'24, the Australasian Language Technology Workshop: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcU_...
youtube.com
ALTA 2024 Keynote#2 - Steven Bird, Language Technology and the Metacrisis
YouTube video by ALTA
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