iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sorry this was a very bad satire XD. I'm trying to mimic the "AI made me so productive" narrative but apparently failed. I am still using Sublime these days. : p I personally like text editors that are just text editors, not trying to do everything for you.

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 20h

I was a firm Vim user. I knew every commands and macros. VS Code, unusable just a few years ago, has completely changed my life. I has made me 10x faster -- so much Vim typing saved! Don't learn hotkeys. Don't tweak your .vimrc. Just. Use. VS Code. Vim users won't be economically viable anymore.

130

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

My wording in the webpage was perhaps a bit too strong though. It's hard not to be emotional these days. : p

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The broadness makes AI a grab-all term, while the narrowness promotes homogenization. Together they make the whole CS all about whatever is the hottest at the moment. I hope being precise can help making this a little bit obvious.

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Narrowness: people use AI to mean the "hottest" method at the time. Now it's LLM. 10 years ago DL/RL. 25 years ago SVM/ML. 30-40 years ago expert symbolic systems. (Time may not be accurate : p). For many (maybe not you) it implies a rather narrow-minded way to approach CS and can be harmful.

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The broadness: AI can be used to mean chatbots, but it can also mean the RL loops around chatbots ("agents"), discriminative systems (jev), image/3D generation, control, protein folding mechanisms, matmul, linear regression, symbolic manipulation etc. At some point it loses its meaning.

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Thanks for engaging! Didn't expect anyone would read it. XD I think the term "AI" itself is actually quite reasonable and I don't intend to argue chatbots are not "intelligent" (it can be anthropomorphizing but "artificial" covers it). My main problem is that it's both too narrow and too broad.

110

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

(It's hard to have nuance in this format. I have a longer but incomplete "manifesto" of my stance on generative models here cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/genera... in case anyone is interested.)

130

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If the framing is instead "I'm overworked and I need to get things done sorry I know this is a hack", then I would be far more sympathetic (we did that a lot pre-LLM!). But nowadays the coping seems to have been elevated to "this has to be the way, you were stupid to care about those details".

141

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's revealing that agents are often framed as "liberating" us from the grunt work, as if those "low-level tasks" were never worth doing to begin with. I find the usual "builder" vs "thinker" distinction misleading. It's the attitude that "these things are obviously beneath me" that's annoying.

161

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Recommended weekend reading. "The end of Computing Science?", Dijkstra, Nov 2000 www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcr...

cs.utexas.edu

E.W. Dijkstra Archive: The end of Computing Science? (EWD1304)

030

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/ Just renovated my website! Completely manually written HTML (though ChatGPT was used for a little bit of internet archaeology and brainstorming : p). Took me about 5-6 hours. Super fun. ^.^

0160

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I noticed students starting to do this even without consulting language models. After talking to students I think it's a form of "defensive writing" as a preemptive strategy for fending criticisms. I told students that this style is distracting but they are like "better than paper being rejected".

010

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

Nicholas Sharp @nmwsharp.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Tomorrow I'll speak at the FPTalks series on floating point and numerical analysis, about robust geometry for neural implicit surfaces (work w/ @_AlecJacobson). The other talks sound amazing, and I love this area! Check out this great organization. fptalks.org/talks/fptalk...

0132

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

My two advices/suggestions to both juniors and seniors: be weird and be curious.

0121

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 01/08/2026

"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/

620451

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

We have a lot of tutorials on "how to write good papers". Maybe it's also useful to have a few ones on "how to write good reviews" and have them available through some official channels? Of course this doesn't fix the main problem that everyone simply has too much on their plates these days...

150

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Hopefully one last SIGGRAPH advertisement. I, myself, yours truly, will present on Haolin's behalf a data-driven method for joint adaptive sampling and quadrature for integration. Wed R408A. In the end of the talk I'll argue why everyone is doing the wrong thing. Paper: suikasibyl.github.io/nqr

0156

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

More SIGGRAPH advertisements: my student Trevor will talk about his work on making ReSTIR significantly more efficient for rendering caustics. The talk is on Wednesday 9:20am at the ReSTIR session (Room 408A). Also check out the paper if you're interested! cwyman.org/papers/tog25...

070

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

For people coming to SIGGRAPH next week: Xuan will present this paper on Thursday 9:50am in the "Prevent Collision" session in Room 403A. Come chat with us!

092

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

People who're coming to SIGGRAPH next week: this paper will be presented by Venkat next Tuesday at 9:50am in the "Layout & Procedural" session at room 403A (I don't know why they put us in this session =.=). Please come and chat with us!

150

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

Ahmed Mahmoud @ahdhn.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Next week at #SIGGRAPH 2026, we'll present "Locality-Aware Automatic Differentiation on the GPU for Mesh-Based Computations," with Rahul Goel, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and @justinmsolomon.bsky.social . Talk: Mon., July 20, 2:50 PM, Room 403-B Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... More below (1/7):

22111

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

Rohan Sawhney @rohansawhney.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Releasing Walk on Spheres Extensions (WoSX): a GPU-accelerated C++/Python library for Monte Carlo physics simulation on complex geometry. Think path tracing but for physics beyond light transport: heat, electrostatics, potential flow, deformation & more! github.com/nv-tlabs/wosx

4295

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

You don't get any prize for being on the list though!

100

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

This is inspired by an initiative I saw somewhere that we should go back to the "old web" where people maintain links to other websites in their own homepages. I asked ChatGPT to provide a list of young graphics academics and none of these people showed up, so it's probably useful information.

060

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/cool_r... I started to maintain a list of homepages of graphics academics who I think did cool work, are younger than me, and are not my current/past students. It's a living list so if I read any cool papers I'll add the authors to the list. I encourage you to do the same!

cseweb.ucsd.edu

3155

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/abstra... Check out the slides of my recent internal talk about abstraction in CS research. Apart from some propaganda of our recent works, the key message is that "abstraction doesn’t, and shouldn’t replace friction" (a corollary of Spolsky's "law of leaky abstraction").

182

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

github.com/txstc55/yasps Check out Xuan's work on a new programming language for writing modular and high-performance physical simulation code from energy definition. The key is two differentiable relational operators (join/union) that model the sparsity structure between the attributes and energy.

0111

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

Victor Zhong @vzhong.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

I helping recalibrate Waterloo’s software engineering program (and to some degree CS) for the age of AI. I wrote an essay on the challenges I’m seeing. www.victorzhong.com/writing/the-...

victorzhong.com

The Homogenization of Computer Science - Victor Zhong

0162

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

iveevi.github.io/rcgp/ Check out Venkat's work on a new graphics programming language on statically enforcing correctness of heterogeneous graphics programs (e.g., resources declared on host must match shaders at compile time). The compiler is open sourced and let us know if you have any comment!

0163

Reposted by Tzu-Mao Li

josh (with paranormalities) @joshwithparenthes.es · 10/05/2026

Out now: AI and the Murder of Truth. And Air Bud. On AI, education, fascism, paying the Dane-geld, and why there ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball. The follow up to last year’s “You are a better writer than AI.” If you liked that video, this is worth your time. youtu.be/sETvPBVKBAY

youtu.be

AI and the Murder of Truth. And Air Bud.

YouTube video by josh (with parentheses)

410943

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Sadly no : ( too many commitments these days

010

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

For people who are attending Eurographics in the coming week: my student Trevor will talk about his latest work on making ReSTIR efficient when reusing from a large number of neighbors. The key is an unbiased estimation of the MIS weight. See the paper below. research.nvidia.com/labs/rtr/pub...

1256

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

"...it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking." Hannah Arendt, 'The Human Condition', 1958.

020

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

EGSR 2026's call for papers is out: egsr2026.inria.fr/call-for-pap...

egsr2026.inria.fr

Call for papers – EGSR 2026

012

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

@wjakob.bsky.social used to do this for his papers by releasing "extended tech reports", e.g., rgl.epfl.ch/publications... rgl.epfl.ch/publications... rgl.epfl.ch/publications... as a nerd on these topics I find reading these detailed tech reports a lot more satisfying!

040

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Yes! I still sometimes fall into this today. It's hard especially when you care a lot about what you did.

020

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

I have procrastinated on writing so much that I wrote an entire document on writing tips: cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/writin... Probably not much is new but I find I still need to repeat the same things to my students regularly. Will update this document over time hopefully.

cseweb.ucsd.edu

Writing tips

2185

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

"AI has transformed programming forever", but what does that even mean? I mean, Sublime Text has transformed the way I and many programmed forever since it came out (with much less cost), but I don't see the same amount of excitement around it. Sorry, have to rant, back to writing proposals. : (

020

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/novelt... I gave an internal talk at UCSD last year regarding "novelty" in computer science research. In it I "debunked" some of the myth people seem to have about what is good research in computer science these days. People seemed to like it, so I thought I should share.

cseweb.ucsd.edu

27625

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

The idea is to use line segments to sample the Dirac delta at the decision boundaries (aka Crofton formula), along with a piecewise program transformation to detect whether the line intersects boundary. For low-dim integrals this marks the first time we can robustly sample general discontinuities.

010

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Check out our recent SIGGRAPH Asia paper on differentiating programs that integrates over discontinuous functions (yes, again), which got the best paper award! yashbelhe.github.io/asd/index.html The first author Yash is looking for a job yashbelhe.github.io so talk to us if you're interested.

1162

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I was surprised most of my students have not heard of Rahimi's very influential talk (it feels like everything just vaporizes in a few years these days), so I thought I should share it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ps...

youtube.com

NIPS 2017 Test of Time Award "Machine learning has become alchemy.” | Ali Rahimi, Google

YouTube video by Preserve Knowledge

040

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Depends on what you mean by "true layering" but Unity docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com... probably has implemented Belcour's layered material belcour.github.io/blog/researc... "It also takes into account light interactions between two vertically stacked physical layers"

docs.unity3d.com

Stacklit material | High Definition Render Pipeline | 17.4.0

120

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

I love everything from Michael Gharbi! mgharbi.com The papers are: groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/xfo... groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/hdr... likesum.github.io/bpn/ tamarott.github.io/ASAPNet_web/ The ones I didn't list here are good too. ; )

160

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Thanks a lot for the warm comments!

010

Tzu-Mao Li @tzumaoli.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

I shared thoughts on what roles "classical graphics" should play in future and also advertise some of our research projects. I also discussed a bit of my thoughts on the field. Take a look if you are interested, or if you have an existential crisis of your graphics-related research or job!

010