Freda Shi
@fredashi.bsky.social
Assistant Professor & Canada CIFAR AI Chair, University of Waterloo & Vector Institute | Excited about "grounding" in any form | Feeder of 🐈 | 🏸, 🏐, 🏂 | she/her
Reposted by Freda Shi
It's #NSF #GRFP application season again so it's time to re-up my GRFP application advice post!
Also, check out the cool bsky comment integration I've added to the blog! Engagement with this post will go under the blogpost on my site as comments!
saxon.me/blog/2024/gr...
Also, check out the cool bsky comment integration I've added to the blog! Engagement with this post will go under the blogpost on my site as comments!
saxon.me/blog/2024/gr...
NSF GRFP Application Tips for NLP, AI, CS
Reflections and advice from my successful NSF GRFP proposal in NLP. Why I think my applications worked well, what I wish I did differently, and links to my actual statements and feedback from the GRFP...
saxon.me
October 30, 2025 at 8:03 PM
It's #NSF #GRFP application season again so it's time to re-up my GRFP application advice post!
Also, check out the cool bsky comment integration I've added to the blog! Engagement with this post will go under the blogpost on my site as comments!
saxon.me/blog/2024/gr...
Also, check out the cool bsky comment integration I've added to the blog! Engagement with this post will go under the blogpost on my site as comments!
saxon.me/blog/2024/gr...
Reviewer timeliness by area (based on a small sample of 14 papers * 4 reviewers each): Multilingual LMs >> VLMs > LLM Reasoning.
October 31, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reviewer timeliness by area (based on a small sample of 14 papers * 4 reviewers each): Multilingual LMs >> VLMs > LLM Reasoning.
Reposted by Freda Shi
We have updated our collection of multilingual poetry corpora PoeTree. With addition of Norwegian, and few metadata fixes it now has a loud label of 1.0.0 release! 🌳
versologie.cz/poetree/vers...
versologie.cz/poetree/vers...
PoeTree. Poetry corpora in 11 languages
PoeTree is a standardized collection of poetry corpora comprising nearly 335,000 poems in ten languages (Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, ...
versologie.cz
October 23, 2025 at 10:08 AM
We have updated our collection of multilingual poetry corpora PoeTree. With addition of Norwegian, and few metadata fixes it now has a loud label of 1.0.0 release! 🌳
versologie.cz/poetree/vers...
versologie.cz/poetree/vers...
Should be fun to read!
@fredashi.bsky.social and I wrote a blog for our new mechinterp paper (arxiv.org/abs/2510.13796), including many unpublished and even negative results that we found meaningful to share.
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs
How We Did This Curiosity-Driven Research? An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs
mars-tin.github.io
October 21, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Should be fun to read!
I can only go through <40 slides in a one-hour talk... verified multiple times. My job talk has 39 slides (including acknowledgement), and so are my recent talks.
Always impressed when folks present 100 slides in the same amount of time.
Always impressed when folks present 100 slides in the same amount of time.
October 20, 2025 at 4:55 AM
I can only go through <40 slides in a one-hour talk... verified multiple times. My job talk has 39 slides (including acknowledgement), and so are my recent talks.
Always impressed when folks present 100 slides in the same amount of time.
Always impressed when folks present 100 slides in the same amount of time.
Reposted by Freda Shi
In 2016 Hinton predicted that AI would replace all radiologists in five years. Ten years later, why hasn't it happened? This post is a great explainer.
www.understandingai.org/p/ai-isnt-re...
www.understandingai.org/p/ai-isnt-re...
AI isn't replacing radiologists
Radiology combines digital images, clear benchmarks, and repeatable tasks. But demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high.
www.understandingai.org
October 1, 2025 at 2:35 PM
In 2016 Hinton predicted that AI would replace all radiologists in five years. Ten years later, why hasn't it happened? This post is a great explainer.
www.understandingai.org/p/ai-isnt-re...
www.understandingai.org/p/ai-isnt-re...
🚀 ACL ARR is looking for a Co-CTO to join me lead our amazing tech team and drive the future of our workflow. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, let’s connect!
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
🚨 ARR is looking for a volunteer Co-CTO to help improve tech infrastructure!
🛠️ Preferred:
• 5+ years in NLP research
• Git, CLI tools, Python, and basic HTML
• 2-year role, overlapping with current Co-CTO
Interested? DM @fredashi.bsky.social or email [email protected]
#ARR #ACL #NLProc
🛠️ Preferred:
• 5+ years in NLP research
• Git, CLI tools, Python, and basic HTML
• 2-year role, overlapping with current Co-CTO
Interested? DM @fredashi.bsky.social or email [email protected]
#ARR #ACL #NLProc
September 29, 2025 at 9:30 PM
🚀 ACL ARR is looking for a Co-CTO to join me lead our amazing tech team and drive the future of our workflow. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, let’s connect!
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
Same! I‘ve literally unbidden 0 out of my recommended batch.
I have soooo many interesting-looking papers in my ICLR - AC bidding batch... I am so happy... 🤩
September 29, 2025 at 9:07 AM
Same! I‘ve literally unbidden 0 out of my recommended batch.
Is there a specific reason that NeurIPS does not show AC identity to reviewers? I'm very curious about who sent the polite reminders, and of course, even more curious about the rude ones.
August 5, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Is there a specific reason that NeurIPS does not show AC identity to reviewers? I'm very curious about who sent the polite reminders, and of course, even more curious about the rude ones.
Reposted by Freda Shi
#CoreCognition #LLM #multimodal #GrowAI We spent 3 years to curate 1503 classic experiments spanning 12 core concepts in human cognitive development and evaluated on 230 MLLMs with 11 different prompts for 5 times to get over 3.8 millions inference data points.
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
June 30, 2025 at 6:07 AM
#CoreCognition #LLM #multimodal #GrowAI We spent 3 years to curate 1503 classic experiments spanning 12 core concepts in human cognitive development and evaluated on 230 MLLMs with 11 different prompts for 5 times to get over 3.8 millions inference data points.
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
Just in case this personal latex environmental setup is helpful to a broader crowd ⬇️
I use local complication w/ VSCode latex workshop plugin + git for version control.
Pros: better hierarchical organization & doesn’t require internet.
Cons: sometimes need to resolve conflict (usually fine if commit frequently) & require a powerful laptop to match overleaf compilation speed.
Pros: better hierarchical organization & doesn’t require internet.
Cons: sometimes need to resolve conflict (usually fine if commit frequently) & require a powerful laptop to match overleaf compilation speed.
May 5, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Just in case this personal latex environmental setup is helpful to a broader crowd ⬇️
Reposted by Freda Shi
I'm late to the NAACL party, but I've just arrived in Albuquerque! I'll talk about measuring faithfulness of verbalized reasoning on *Sunday* at Repl4NLP at *9:45*.
May 3, 2025 at 5:52 AM
I'm late to the NAACL party, but I've just arrived in Albuquerque! I'll talk about measuring faithfulness of verbalized reasoning on *Sunday* at Repl4NLP at *9:45*.
Reposted by Freda Shi
hello NAACL friends I'm giving a keynote today at RepL4NLP at 1:30PM local time, come say hi! I'll mostly be musing about things with light research discussions
May 4, 2025 at 1:48 PM
hello NAACL friends I'm giving a keynote today at RepL4NLP at 1:30PM local time, come say hi! I'll mostly be musing about things with light research discussions
If you are also at NAACL, let's chat!
April 29, 2025 at 1:32 PM
If you are also at NAACL, let's chat!
On my way to NAACL✈️! If you're also there and interested in grounding, don't miss our tutorial on "Learning Language through Grounding"!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
April 29, 2025 at 1:26 PM
On my way to NAACL✈️! If you're also there and interested in grounding, don't miss our tutorial on "Learning Language through Grounding"!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
Reposted by Freda Shi
📢Curious why your LLM behaves strangely after long SFT or DPO?
We offer a fresh perspective—consider doing a "force analysis" on your model’s behavior.
Check out our #ICLR2025 Oral paper:
Learning Dynamics of LLM Finetuning!
(0/12)
We offer a fresh perspective—consider doing a "force analysis" on your model’s behavior.
Check out our #ICLR2025 Oral paper:
Learning Dynamics of LLM Finetuning!
(0/12)
April 21, 2025 at 5:45 AM
📢Curious why your LLM behaves strangely after long SFT or DPO?
We offer a fresh perspective—consider doing a "force analysis" on your model’s behavior.
Check out our #ICLR2025 Oral paper:
Learning Dynamics of LLM Finetuning!
(0/12)
We offer a fresh perspective—consider doing a "force analysis" on your model’s behavior.
Check out our #ICLR2025 Oral paper:
Learning Dynamics of LLM Finetuning!
(0/12)
✈ Just landed in Singapore for #ICLR 2025! DM or email me if you'd like to chat about
- Grounded language acquisition and learning
- What do vision-language models "know," and what they don't
- (Computational) linguistics with/for language models, especially grounded LMs
(1/)
- Grounded language acquisition and learning
- What do vision-language models "know," and what they don't
- (Computational) linguistics with/for language models, especially grounded LMs
(1/)
April 23, 2025 at 1:19 AM
✈ Just landed in Singapore for #ICLR 2025! DM or email me if you'd like to chat about
- Grounded language acquisition and learning
- What do vision-language models "know," and what they don't
- (Computational) linguistics with/for language models, especially grounded LMs
(1/)
- Grounded language acquisition and learning
- What do vision-language models "know," and what they don't
- (Computational) linguistics with/for language models, especially grounded LMs
(1/)
I received a review like this five years ago. It’s probably the right time now to share it with everyone who wrote or got random discouraging reviews from ICML/ACL.
March 28, 2025 at 7:55 PM
I received a review like this five years ago. It’s probably the right time now to share it with everyone who wrote or got random discouraging reviews from ICML/ACL.
Reposted by Freda Shi
I still can't comprehend how an AC (a professor) accepts the role but then never responds back to emails and never completes their tasks😖! We need urgent 5 emergency reviewers to complete reviews for ACL by the end of today. Area: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness. Please reach out if you can help! Thanks🙏
March 27, 2025 at 1:17 PM
I still can't comprehend how an AC (a professor) accepts the role but then never responds back to emails and never completes their tasks😖! We need urgent 5 emergency reviewers to complete reviews for ACL by the end of today. Area: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness. Please reach out if you can help! Thanks🙏
I was assigned to review three, and fortunately got a decent one. This is probably just the submission distribution nowadays.
I love position papers, I've written at least 4, but ICML has made a mistake somewhere in their position CFP. Submissions cover non-editorial experimental work, flag-planting grant proposals, compilations of random thoughts, or normative declarations without support. What went wrong?
March 17, 2025 at 5:59 PM
I was assigned to review three, and fortunately got a decent one. This is probably just the submission distribution nowadays.
🤖 I just made the slides public for this talk. TL; DR: how we computer scientists adapt insights from linguistics to analyze and improve our models. Comments & discussion are welcomed; the recording from Vector is forthcoming.
docs.google.com/presentation...
docs.google.com/presentation...
March 17, 2025 at 5:14 PM
🤖 I just made the slides public for this talk. TL; DR: how we computer scientists adapt insights from linguistics to analyze and improve our models. Comments & discussion are welcomed; the recording from Vector is forthcoming.
docs.google.com/presentation...
docs.google.com/presentation...
Reposted by Freda Shi
There is a postdoctoral position for research on adversarial robustness at UBC, supervised by Mathias Lecuyer (@mathias-lecuyer.bsky.social), Geoff Pleiss, and Nidhi Hegde. Please spread the word! 🇨🇦
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Application for a postdoctoral position on adversarial robustness
Location - Work primarily takes place at UBC, Vancouver, Computer Science department.
Position - We are recruiting a postdoctoral researcher for a funded position, under the joint supervision of Math...
docs.google.com
March 11, 2025 at 4:21 PM
There is a postdoctoral position for research on adversarial robustness at UBC, supervised by Mathias Lecuyer (@mathias-lecuyer.bsky.social), Geoff Pleiss, and Nidhi Hegde. Please spread the word! 🇨🇦
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Reposted by Freda Shi
Customizing ggplot for yourself or your organization - slides and #RStats code from @pewresearch.org 's #NICAR25 presentation
github.com/pewresearch/...
github.com/pewresearch/...
GitHub - pewresearch/pewplots-nicar-2025: Materials from NICAR 2025 session "Customizing ggplot for yourself or your organization"
Materials from NICAR 2025 session "Customizing ggplot for yourself or your organization" - pewresearch/pewplots-nicar-2025
github.com
March 9, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Customizing ggplot for yourself or your organization - slides and #RStats code from @pewresearch.org 's #NICAR25 presentation
github.com/pewresearch/...
github.com/pewresearch/...
Another common suggestion I gave to almost all ICML papers I reviewed this time: whenever you write (CS/ML style) theory, please ensure all variables are defined. Although I can complete it with educated guess for most times, it's not always the case.
It's frustrating to see increasingly many false references in papers I'm reviewing. The authors write "claim about X (Y et al., 2019)" in the paper---as someone who has carefully read Y et al. (2019) and has done follow-up work, I'm confident there's no claim about X at all in it.
#AmReviewing
#AmReviewing
March 9, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Another common suggestion I gave to almost all ICML papers I reviewed this time: whenever you write (CS/ML style) theory, please ensure all variables are defined. Although I can complete it with educated guess for most times, it's not always the case.
It's frustrating to see increasingly many false references in papers I'm reviewing. The authors write "claim about X (Y et al., 2019)" in the paper---as someone who has carefully read Y et al. (2019) and has done follow-up work, I'm confident there's no claim about X at all in it.
#AmReviewing
#AmReviewing
March 7, 2025 at 9:45 PM
It's frustrating to see increasingly many false references in papers I'm reviewing. The authors write "claim about X (Y et al., 2019)" in the paper---as someone who has carefully read Y et al. (2019) and has done follow-up work, I'm confident there's no claim about X at all in it.
#AmReviewing
#AmReviewing