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William Isaac

@williamis.bsky.social
3.2K followers 126 following 50 posts

Research Scientist @DeepMind | Previously @OSFellows & @hrdag. RT != endorsements. Opinions Mine. Pronouns: he/him

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Reposted by William Isaac
Arkadiy Saakyan @asaakyan.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Excited to share #ICML2026 paper from my internship @ Google DeepMind! AI models are deployed globally, but AI safety datasets are largely geographically homogenous. What is the impact of culture on AI safety ratings? Is there any impact beyond standard demographics like age, gender, and ethnicity?
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Paige Bailey (webpaige.dev) @dynamicwebpaige.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Demis Hassabis, co-founder & CEO of DeepMind, is coming to YC! 🎉 > Fireside chat w/ Garry Tan > Keynote from DeepMind researchers > Talks & live demos from YC founders > Meet DeepMind engineers 1:1 If you're building at the edge of AI, you should be there. events.ycombinator.com/gdm-startupday
events.ycombinator.com
YC x Google DeepMind Startups Day with Demis Hassabis & Garry Tan
Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO, Google DeepMind is coming to YC for a fireside chat with Garry Tan on the future of AI. We're bringing together top founders, builders, and the Google DeepMind r...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Now out: Video of my recent conversation with @chrislhayes.bsky.social about his great book The Siren's Call, social media's grip on our attention, and what AI may mean for our focus, politics, and future. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY38...
youtube.com
CBH Talk | Chris Hayes Discusses “The Siren’s Call” with Alondra Nelson
YouTube video by Center for Brooklyn History
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Quentin Berthet @ AISTATS @qberthet.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
🚨 🔬 PhD positions at Google DeepMind in France 🇫🇷 We are advertising Master Level Intern positions at Google DeepMind within our Frontier AI Unit. These could lead to co-advised PhD positions with Google DeepMind and French academic institutions. job-boards.greenhouse.io/deepmind/job...
job-boards.greenhouse.io
Stagiaire de niveau Master, France / Master Level Intern, France
Grenoble, France ; Paris, France
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 02/02/2026
What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots
theguardian.com
What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots
A bit like Reddit for artificial intelligence, Moltbook allows AI agents – bots built by humans – to post and interact with each other. People are allowed as observers only
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Real world implications of the shift towards AI adoption
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Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
A ton of attention over the years goes to plots comparing open to closed models. The real trend that matters for AI impacts on society is the gap between closed frontier models and local consumer models. Local models passing major milestones will have major repercussions. buff.ly/ccMJydQ
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Claude, "We all know among Sauron's many evils was that he ran Mordor using an Excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Show me the spreadsheet" It made 12 tabs "so bureaucratically complex that even the Eye of Sauron would need reading glasses to review it." Some very funny stuff. Creative, even.
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AI & ML News @ai-news.at.thenote.app · 14/09/2025
Gemini Live is giving me the confidence to speak my second language The anxiety I experience when trying to speak my second language disappears when I use Gemini Live. #ai #gemini #geminiai
androidauthority.com
Gemini Live is giving me the confidence to speak my second language
The anxiety I experience when trying to speak my second language disappears when I use Gemini Live.
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
This is a cool paper that suggests that AI agents can indeed be used for social science experiments, but that just using a chatbot isn't good enough, instead prompts developed based on social & game theory makes AI agent actions predictive of real human outcomes. benjaminmanning.io/files/optimi...
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Duolingo’s recent earnings shows the gap between online vocal AI critics and businesses real-world value. Despite the backlash, Duolingo’s revenue and daily users jumped 40%. The AI hype is wild, but so is the value people are getting. This isn’t blockchain, it’s more like mobile or the internet
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Paige Bailey (webpaige.dev) @dynamicwebpaige.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
"In collaboration with the @archive.org TV News Archive we examined 14,749 evening news broadcasts spanning the big three networks from July 2010 to present, asking Gemini 2.5 Flash Thinking to make an index of the stories covered in each broadcast, geography, sentiment, frame, narrative structure.
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Nancy Baym @nancybaym.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
We may have the chance to hire an outstanding researcher 3+ years post PhD to join Tarleton Gillespie, Mary Gray and me in Cambridge MA bringing critical sociotechnical perspectives to bear on new technologies. jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...
jobs.careers.microsoft.com
Search Jobs | Microsoft Careers
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
🤯
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Hoi Lam @hoitab.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
🥇 I am so happy to see the Google DeepMind Gemini team **OFFICIALLY** achieved gold-medal performance. Not only did we get 5 out of 6 questions correct. What's more amazing is the official IMO graders find those answers to be clear, precise and easy to follow! 1/ deepmind.google/discover/blo...
deepmind.google
Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad
Our advanced model officially achieved a gold-medal level performance on problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the world’s most prestigious competition for young...
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
"[video game] as a community theater production" may be one of the most delightful Veo 3 Fast prompts Please enjoy, in order: GTA, Pokemon, Mario Kart, The Witcher 3, Stardew Valley, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, The Sims, & Death Stranding. The whole prompt was the one above. And the glitches add to it
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Hanna Wallach @hannawallach.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
If you're at @icmlconf.bsky.social this week, come check out our poster on "Position: Evaluating Generative AI Systems Is a Social Science Measurement Challenge" presented by the amazing @afedercooper.bsky.social from 11:30am--1:30pm PDT on Weds!!! icml.cc/virtual/2025...
icml.cc
ICML Poster Position: Evaluating Generative AI Systems Is a Social Science Measurement ChallengeICML 2025
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B! 🐝 Cavello (they/them) @b-cavello.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
The #FAccT and #ICML tags are good places to find some brilliant folks
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Patrick Boueri @patrickboueri.com · 14/07/2025
The best article ive read so far on social impacts: henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod...
henryfarrell.net
Large AI models are cultural and social technologies – Henry Farrell
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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Did a starter pack a while back too of scholars and practitioners who cover this angle in case that’s useful go.bsky.app/5sFqVNS
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Jess Hamrick @jhamrick.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
If it's helpful, I followed the recommendations in this post from @nsaphra.bsky.social and as a result have a much more interesting and ML-focused feed: nsaphra.net/post/bsky/
nsaphra.net
The AI Researcher's Guide to a Non-Boring Bluesky Feed | Naomi Saphra
How to migrate to bsky without a boring feed.
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Jess Hamrick @jhamrick.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
These are the ML feeds I've pinned that now get mixed into my main feed: - ML Feed: Trending bsky.app/profile/smcg... - MLSky: bsky.app/profile/alex... - GenAI Bluesky Network: bsky.app/profile/hell... - Nuanced AI Commentary: bsky.app/profile/dame...
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707Kat @707kat.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
I can recommend following: @simonwillison.net, @metr.org, @abeba.bsky.social, @mmitchell.bsky.social , @wang.social, @sashamtl.bsky.social, @justinhendrix.bsky.social, @bvlsingler.bsky.social Some of the people I follow to keep up with that side of things. :)
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
I would love to see more discussion on ML/AI on bsky. Particularly more nuanced discussions of the societal impacts. If you tag in the relevant post, I'll be sure to repost it!
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Benjamin Lefaudeux 🇺🇦 @bentheegg.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Still not a lot of ML talk on bsky (at least in my feed), hence paper Sunday: my two most interesting recent reads - H Nets arxiv.org/abs/2507.07955 - Energy Based Transformers arxiv.org/abs/2507.02092
arxiv.org
Dynamic Chunking for End-to-End Hierarchical Sequence Modeling
Despite incredible progress in language models (LMs) in recent years, largely resulting from moving away from specialized models designed for specific tasks to general models based on powerful archite...
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
I’ve loved everything about the Red Lobster turnaround: • A young Nigerian immigrant CEO who previously ran PF Chang (which I love) • Listened to customers and made swift changes • Stars in ads, bringing real authenticity to the “we’re fixing it” vibe
campaignlive.com
From a popular CEO to viral seafood boils: The story behind Red Lobster’s biz comeback
New offerings and marketing initiatives spark the ‘polish casual’ restaurant’s re-emergence after years of sinking fortunes.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 03/07/2025
Reasons you should donate to EFF this month: 1. We're turning 35! Wish us a happy birthday 🥳 2. We've got cool new swag--our gift to you 👕 3. We're advocating for your rights to privacy and free speech online 👩‍💻
eff.org
35 Years for Privacy, Free Speech, and a Brighter Future
Through July 10, new monthly or annual Sustaining Donors get an EFF35 Challenge Coin! With your help, EFF is here to stay.
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Kristian Lum @kldivergence.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Anyone at #facct2025 want to go to the acropolis this afternoon?
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luokai @luok.ai · 26/06/2025
Claude Code, meet your rival: Gemini CLI 🔥🚀 Google just unleashed Gemini 2.5 Pro at the command line—free, open-source (Apache 2.0) , 1-million-token brain baked right into your terminal. Chat, code, search, script—all with zero tab fatigue.
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Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
The real Bear Grylls
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
The two most common questions I get asked about AI are “which AI should I use” and “how do I start using AI?” I wrote a short guide attempting to answer both questions. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-r...
oneusefulthing.org
Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide
Which AIs to use, and how to use them
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Current Polymarket probabilities: -Khamenei out as Supreme Leader of Iran in 2025? 63% -Will the Iranian regime fall in 2025? 29% -Iranian coup attempt before July? 12% -Iran Nuke in 2025? 17% -Will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz in 2025? 52% -US-Iran nuclear deal in 2025? 36%
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
veo 3: "three toy ships, one made of iron, the other of wood, and one out of loosely packed sugar, are dropped into a pool of water" AI video tools really do seem to be able to simulate physics well (but not perfectly) without having an underlying physics engine. Signs of a world model?
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Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
#BookSky
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
This is really disappointing to hear. I really enjoy Ethan's posts and perspective on AI.
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
You can just take academic papers and paste them into Gemini 2.5/ChatGPT o3/Claude 4 with the prompt "build me a game based on this paper, make it interesting and thematic but still conveying key findings" and get a tiny working educational game. (In this case, I used Gemini)
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J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
It's been 23 years since Bernstein's "10 tips on Writing the Living Web," an iconic guide to blogging. In 2025 I suspect most are no longer viable & some might never have worked for everyone. Three that still apply are: - write for a reason - write often - write tight alistapart.com/article/writ...
alistapart.com
10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
Your information architecture is as smooth, clear, and inviting as a lake. Your design rocks. Your code works. But what keeps readers coming back is compelling writing that’s continually fres…
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Gus @gusthema.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Next week is Google IO and there are many cool things happening! 🎉🎉🎉 One of them is this presentation I'll give with my college Omar talking about Gemma models It will be recorded and streamed! io.google/2025/explore...
io.google
Google I/O 2025: What's new in the Gemmaverse
Don’t miss Google I/O, featuring product launches, innovations, and insights. Tune in for the live keynotes and sessions.
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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Why We Think by Lilian Weng Test time compute and Chain-of-thought (CoT) have led to significant improvements in model performance, while raising many research questions. This post aims to review recent developments in how to effectively use test-time compute (i.e. “thinking time”) and why it helps
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CREST Sociology @crestsociology.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
NEW ARTICLE: Want to use LLMs to extract information at scale in sociology? @eollion.bsky.social @oms279.bsky.social and C. Ton have you covered. Read "From Codebooks to Promptbooks," now in Sociological Methods & Research doi.org/10.1177/0049... (Preprint @socarxiv.bsky.social: osf.io/wjvfq_v1)
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Slop farmer...is now a thing?
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Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Sycophancy and the art of the model. Borderline self-indulgant to get to write about the messiness of RLHF to this extent, but simultaneously essential. A must read. GPT-4o-simp is a sign of things to come. www.interconnects.ai/p/sycophancy...
interconnects.ai
Sycophancy and the art of the model
GPT-4o-simp, LMArena backlash, and people refusing to understand how messy and crucial RLHF is.
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Jess Hamrick @jhamrick.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
I find it totally crazy that the IRB didn't find the lack of informed consent problematic? That's one of the most important requirements of human behavioral research. I remember having to take multiple trainings on it during grad school to make sure that, no really, I understood how important it was
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
👀 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
The Memorization Problem: Can We Trust LLMs' Economic Forecasts?
Large language models (LLMs) cannot be trusted for economic forecasts during periods covered by their training data. We provide the first systematic evaluation
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Best airport food in the US
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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Google Gemini team loves this chart for some reason... aider.chat/docs/leaderb...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Keep the faith. Take action. Be honest about risk. Be prudent (with words, acquaintances, and technology). @juliaangwin.com and @amifieldsmeyer.bsky.social distill the wisdom of elders and of the ages into a primer for The Opposition™️ Your weekend #mustread
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Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 11/04/2025
The Computing Research Association (@cra-hq.bsky.social) has a new trustworthy AI research fellowship. Intended for folks 1-3 years out of their PhD and with interdisciplinary experience in social sciences. cra.org/cra-trustwor...
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William Isaac @williamis.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
This is a great reminder of the work that is needed to improve the science of AI evaluations.
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