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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Aug 22

Apply here - aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05028 by 11/15, but review of applications is ongoing so sooner is better! (Application deadline currently says 9/15 but will be extended).

Postdoctoral Employee - Artificial Intelligence - Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Aug 22

Broad project areas include:

1) language modelling methods for scientific discovery (building on our recent work - arxiv.org/abs/2502.04382)

2) using language models to support equity (ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10....)

both in collaboration with health+social scientists.

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Sparse Autoencoders for Hypothesis Generation

We describe HypotheSAEs, a general method to hypothesize interpretable relationships between text data (e.g., headlines) and a target variable (e.g., clicks). HypotheSAEs has three steps: (1) train a ...

arxiv.org

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Aug 22

🚨 New postdoc position in our lab at Berkeley EECS! 🚨

(please reshare)

We seek applicants with experience in language modeling who are excited about high-impact applications in the health and social sciences!

More info in thread

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Raj Movva @rajmovva.bsky.social · Aug 5

📢New POSITION PAPER: Use Sparse Autoencoders to Discover Unknown Concepts, Not to Act on Known Concepts

Despite recent results, SAEs aren't dead! They can still be useful to mech interp, and also much more broadly: across FAccT, computational social science, and ML4H. 🧵

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Jul 7

SF fog coming up to swallow us in time lapse.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Jun 27

Honored to win a #CHIL2025 best paper award for our work modeling inequality in disease progression, led by @ericachiang.bsky.social!

To the NIH: health inequality remains a vital topic to support the health of all Americans. As we prove, failing to account for it biases estimates for everyone.

Erica Chiang @ericachiang.bsky.social · Jun 27

I can’t believe I’m saying this: our work received a Best Paper Award at #CHIL2025!! So so excited and grateful 🥰 Looking forward to day 2 of the conference with these awesome people :)

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Allison Koenecke @allisonkoe.bsky.social · Jun 23

For folks at @facct.bsky.social, our very own @cornellbowers.bsky.social student @emmharv.bsky.social will present the Best-Paper-Award-winning work she led on Wednesday at 10:45 AM in the "Audit and Evaluation Approaches" session!

In the meantime, 🧵 below and 🔗 here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04419 !

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social · Jun 14

assassinations, handcuffing a senator at press conference, marines detaining a civilian, and a military parade for the president’s birthday. rough week for democracy.

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · Jun 14

Governor Waltz has now confirmed that Hortman and her husband were killed in the attack.

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Divya Shanmugam @dmshanmugam.bsky.social · Jun 14

and... here is the actual GIF 🙈

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · May 1

The first paper of @ericachiang.bsky.social's PhD, just accepted at #CHIL2025, proposes a model of disease progression which estimates and accounts for 3 types of health disparities to more accurately measure disease severity. See her full thread below!

Erica Chiang @ericachiang.bsky.social · May 1

I’m really excited to share the first paper of my PhD, “Learning Disease Progression Models That Capture Health Disparities” (accepted at #CHIL2025)! ✨ 1/

📄: arxiv.org/abs/2412.16406

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Apr 26

Thanks, Megan!! This is kind :) hope you’re doing well.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Apr 25

The US government recently flagged my scientific grant in its "woke DEI database". Many people have asked me what I will do.

My answer today in Nature.

We will not be cowed. We will keep using AI to build a fairer, healthier world.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My ‘woke DEI’ grant has been flagged for scrutiny. Where do I go from here?

My work in making artificial intelligence fair has been noticed by US officials intent on ending ‘class warfare propaganda’.

www.nature.com

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Apr 24

A pleasure to join the Tech Policy Press podcast with @natematias.bsky.social, @geomblog.bsky.social, and @justinhendrix.bsky.social to defend the consensus that AI bias is an important concern.

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · Apr 16

Last month, a group of 200+ researchers signed a letter “Affirming the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI.” It comes at a time when the Trump admin is rolling back AI policies and threatening research. Justin Hendrix spoke to three of the letter's signatories.

Researchers Defend the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI | TechPolicy.Press

A podcast discussion with scholars J. Nathan Matias, Emma Pierson, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian.

www.techpolicy.press

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Apr 2

Lab had dogathon! Seminal dog discoveries ensued.

Kenny Peng @kennypeng.bsky.social · Apr 2

Our lab had a #dogathon 🐕 yesterday where we analyzed NYC Open Data on dog licenses. We learned a lot of dog facts, which I’ll share in this thread 🧵

1) Geospatial trends: Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are common in Manhattan; the opposite is true for Yorkshire Terriers.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Mar 28

This work is led by @gsagostini.bsky.social, who gets more excited about geospatial data than anyone I've ever met, and with Rachel Young, Maria Fitzpatrick, and @nkgarg.bsky.social.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2503.20989
Website (and data): migrate.tech.cornell.edu
Thread: bsky.app/profile/gsag...

Gabriel Agostini @gsagostini.bsky.social · Mar 28

Migration data lets us study responses to environmental disasters, social change patterns, policy impacts, etc. But public data is too coarse, obscuring these important phenomena!

We build MIGRATE: a dataset of yearly flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census Block Groups. 1/5

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Mar 28

Migration data is critical in the health, environmental, and social sciences.

We're releasing a new dataset, MIGRATE: annual flows between 47 billion pairs of US Census areas. MIGRATE is:

- 4600x more granular than existing public data
- highly correlated with external ground-truth data

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Raj Movva @rajmovva.bsky.social · Mar 18

💡New preprint & Python package: We use sparse autoencoders to generate hypotheses from large text datasets.

Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Mar 18

This work is led by the wonderful @rajmovva.bsky.social and @kennypeng.bsky.social with coauthors @nkgarg.bsky.social and Jon Kleinberg. See Raj’s full thread for details, Python package, and project website!

bsky.app/profile/rajm...

Raj Movva @rajmovva.bsky.social · Mar 18

💡New preprint & Python package: We use sparse autoencoders to generate hypotheses from large text datasets.

Our method, HypotheSAEs, produces interpretable text features that predict a target variable, e.g. features in news headlines that predict engagement. 🧵1/

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Mar 18

HypotheSAEs outperforms strong LLM baselines, generates new discoveries even on well-studied datasets, and comes with easy-to-use code.

We hope this will be helpful not just to CS folks, but to many in social/health sciences - please reshare to help reach them.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Mar 18

We have a new method, HypotheSAEs, for identifying *interpretable text features that predict a target variable* (aka hypothesis generation).

What features of a headline predict engagement?

What features of a clinical note predict whether a patient will develop cancer?

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Allison Koenecke @allisonkoe.bsky.social · Feb 18

Humbled and honored to receive this award -- thank you, @sloanfoundation.bsky.social, for supporting STEM research!

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation @sloanfoundation.bsky.social · Feb 18

🎉Congrats to the 126 early-career scientists who have been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship this year! These exceptional scholars are drawn from 51 institutions across the US and Canada, and represent the next generation of groundbreaking researchers. sloan.org/fellowships/...

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Reposted by Emma Pierson

Ashesh Rambachan @asheshrambachan.bsky.social · Jan 26

Applications are open for the Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute (MLESI) 2025 are open!

If you're a graduate student, come learn about ML/AI and its uses throughout economics.

Apply by March 28. The application and more info can be found here: www.chicagobooth.edu/research/cen...

Machine Learning in Economics Summer Institute 2025 (MLESI25)

<span id="docs-internal-guid-53f97f20-7fff-b55c-c89c-4f85d663a48c" style="color: #39393a;"><span style="color: #000000;">MLESI<span id="docs-internal-guid-394e21c4-7fff-1437-16ff-fdbb1ce1d34c" style="...

www.chicagobooth.edu

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Jan 14

In general, we're certainly not claiming philanthropists can or should fully replace federal funding (for the reasons you point out!)

Rather, we're arguing that philanthropists should consider which areas have been particularly hard-hit by rash federal funding cuts when they decide what to fund.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Jan 14

I totally agree about the importance of federal funding!! It will be a great loss if it is severely cut.

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Emma Pierson @emmapierson.bsky.social · Jan 14

New piece in Nature: @leahpierson.bsky.social and I argue that philanthropic funders should shield science from cuts the Trump administration may make to climate science, infectious disease, etc.

Free access link: rdcu.be/d6aul
Longer version on my website: shorturl.at/muwts

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