Ray Becker
@raybecker.bsky.social
170 followers 160 following 79 posts
Computational corpus linguist, psychology of language enthusiast. Embodied/Enacted/Extendend/Embedded language > LLMs
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Ray Becker
olivia.science
we're trying something, please consider signing openletter.earth/open-letter-...

also see bsky.app/profile/oliv...
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
Reposted by Ray Becker
sfiscience.bsky.social
Final week to apply for the 2026 SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships

If you're an early-career scholar and passionate about collaborative, transdisciplinary research beyond traditional departments, this is the postdoc fellowship for you.

Deadline: Oct 1, 2025

Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship
Reposted by Ray Becker
deniswirtz.bsky.social
These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers.

My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers.

We found 437 of them.

Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...
Reposted by Ray Becker
forrt.bsky.social
🎓 Get PAID to co-create open-access teaching materials!

We're launching a funded initiative to make open science education more inclusive and accessible beyond elite institutions and the Global North.

Contribute a set of materials and earn €400. 🧵
raybecker.bsky.social
I was inspired by the The Daily Show's segment on Monday to write this post relating some work that I did a few years ago with Sabina Tabacaru on the meaning of the phrase "raising eyebrows". May 12th definitely raised some eyebrows open.substack.com/pub/raybecke...
May 12th definitely raised some eyebrows
The phrase “raised eyebrows” is deceptively simple but semantically ambiguous given its meaning hinges on subtle contextual cues that both humans and AI systems often struggle to resolve.
open.substack.com
Reposted by Ray Becker
dermotlynott.bsky.social
PsyArXiv and OSF preprints have implemented DOI versioning - here's a short blog post about what that means
blog.psyarxiv.com/2025/04/16/n...
#openAccess #openResearch #openScience #preprints
New to PsyArXiv: DOI Versioning – PsyArXiv Blog
A short description of DOI versioning that has been implemented for PsyArXiv preprints
blog.psyarxiv.com
Reposted by Ray Becker
forrt.bsky.social
Register for the Replication Research Symposium organized by FORRT and the Münster Center for Open Science (online & on-site)!

Register for free (on-site or virtual*) before March 31st:
🔗 indico.uni-muenster.de/event/3176/r...

📅 3-day symposium on replications & reproductions (14–16 May 2025) 🧵
Replication Research Symposium
indico.uni-muenster.de
Reposted by Ray Becker
falkhuettig.bsky.social
My book ‘Looking Ahead. The New Science of the Predictive Mind’ is available from today. Cambridge has provided a temporary promo code, if you enter HUETT24 and order via the CUP website you get 20% off any version (hardback, paperback, or ebook) www.cambridge.org/de/universit...
Reposted by Ray Becker
improvingpsych.org
The Tentative Program for in-person SIPS is now available online!

Let's meet in Budapest for exciting hackathons, unconferences, roundtables, and workshops!

Check out the program here 👇
Program – SIPS 2025
Last update: 02/25/2025
buff.ly
raybecker.bsky.social
These are great:
Kolers, P. A., & Roediger III, H. L. (1984). Procedures of mind. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 23(4), 425-449. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Glenberg, A. M. (1997). What memory is for. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(1), 1–55. doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Procedures of mind
The prevailing metaphor for studies of learning and memory emphasizes the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of “information”; within this framework,…
www.sciencedirect.com
Reposted by Ray Becker
mioana.bsky.social
Also by Eko: "Meta and X gave the green light to AI-generated ads that called for the gassing of immigrants in concentration camps and the burning of synagogues ahead of Germany’s federal elections on Feb. 23" www.adweek.com/media/meta-a... X approved 10/10 ads. Facebook rejected 5 as "political"
Meta and X Approve AI Ads Referencing Nazi War Crimes Ahead of German Elections, Research Finds
The ads promoted extremist hate speech.
www.adweek.com
Reposted by Ray Becker
apoorvalal.com
chain of thought is hilarious

(distilled deepseek 14b running via ollama)
raybecker.bsky.social
A perfect gift just in time for Valentine's Day
Reposted by Ray Becker
mitpress.bsky.social
"An original, thrilling, poetic, and utterly humane exploration of the linguistic bookends of our human lives."—Ellen Jovin, @grammartable.bsky.social

Michael Erard's intimate study of our first and last words arrives in just two weeks: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204942...
michaelerard.bsky.social
It’s here! An object I can hold!

As a thing, it’s surprisingly heavy. Said the 8 yo: “it’s so heavy because it’s full of love.”
The cover of my book with flowers peeking over the top
Reposted by Ray Becker
ducuuo.bsky.social
Vote vote vote!

Our ballot to save jobs at the University of Dundee will close in 10 days.

Post your ballots in the next couple of days to ensure that they arrive in time.

#SaveDundeeUniversity
A photograph of a person’s hand posting an addressed envelope in a red post box in Dundee.
Reposted by Ray Becker
garymarcus.bsky.social
👉 DeepSeek may well have broken OpenAI’s Terms of Service and distilled their intellectually property without permission
👉 OpenAI may well have done analogous things to YouTube, New York Times, and countless artists and writers.
👉 Karma is a bitch.