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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · 3d

Heading to AIES in a few weeks, looking forward to catching up with familiar faces and meeting new ones!

Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Aug 21

Congratulations, @jolukito.bsky.social 🥳 and congratulations, DDC!

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Aug 4

Big personal news: my family and I decided to leave the US and we are starting a new chapter in Europe. I am looking forward to building a new home in Barcelona, where I will join ESADE as a tenured Associate Professor this Fall.

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Reposted by Maria De-Arteaga

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · Feb 19

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

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Reposted by Maria De-Arteaga

Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · Jul 21

“Since AFP was founded in 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, some have been injured, others taken prisoner. But none of us remember witnessing colleagues die of hunger".
🚨🧵

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Reposted by Maria De-Arteaga

ACM FAccT @facct.bsky.social · Jun 30

We're happy to officially announce the location of #FAccT2026!

Next year's conference will be held in Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦

Su Lin Blodgett and Zeerak Talat will be General Chairs, and Michael Madaio will be PC Chair 🎉

(thanks to MindView for the photo!)

Photo of the Town Hall meeting at last week's conference. The audience watches as Su Lin Blodgett announces the location of next year's conference. Su Lin Blodgett and Zeerak Talat will be General Chairs, and Michael Madaio will be PC Chair.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 27

Thank you, Jenn 💛 And thank you for all the work you did to put together such a stellar program!

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 27

Thank you, Sorelle! I wish our terms had overlapped more 💛 And I'm definitely not going anywhere. I just need a multi-year break from any service before I'm insane enough to put together a bid for FAccT Colombia 😊

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

I vividly remember attending the first FAccT and thinking it would be a *dream* to publish in it, so having served as EC has truly been an immense honor ❤️

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

After these five years, I am exhausted, but I am also very grateful to a community that has shaped my scholarship and my career in crucial ways, and I am very glad the time I have devoted to service has gone to a community doing such important work.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

As a community, we are a bunch of people who deeply care, who are trying hard in all of our imperfect ways, and who have found others to build a counterweight to powerful entities who are harming communities in multitude of ways.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

All this said, FAccT is awesome, I can’t think of any other space where many of the crucial conversations I see at FAccT would take place, and I hope folks in Athens are currently partying together, feeling in community, and charging up for all the fights we have ahead.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

Over the years, I have seen countless people who drift away from the community after they finish their term serving, and I get it—I do feel the need to go into a hole and recharge before I can give more to this community.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

3. This last one feels a bit odd to bring up, it feels a bit self-serving, but I suspect that's why none of us ever talk about it, so I'll say it regardless. FAccT as a community has many wonderful things, but I’d argue that it is very ungrateful to the people who do service for it.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

Ensuring our mode of conversations and engagement is directed towards community building and strengthening is so crucial at a time when many in power will be rooting against us.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

2. Intentionality in community building: This is an issue faced by most coalitions that seek transformative change—we are so trained to be critical, it is very easy to tear ourselves down. This is also another space where our research can inform our practice.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

While counterfactuals are hard to estimate, I’d argue that the transition from twitter-mediated to bluesky-mediated conversations has had a palpable effect. Intentionality and agency in shaping our online spaces is a realm where our research touches our own community organizing.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

1. Algorithmic-mediated conversations: As a community who is critical of algorithms, we ought to reflect on how algorithmic rewards have deeply shaped discourse and relationships in our community.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

After 5 years of FAccT service, I see so much value in FAccT. Precisely for this reason, I want to take a moment to highlight elements that I believe the community needs to learn to better navigate, especially during a time when it is likely to face a hostile environment.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

The end of #FAccT2025 marks the end of my 3-year term as FAccT EC, which followed a 2-year term as DEI Chair. It has been an honor to serve this community and watch it mature.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 26

What a fantastic conference #FAccT2025! Very grateful to @metaxa.net @asiabiega.bsky.social and @sciorestis.bsky.social for their stellar job as GCs, and @jennwv.bsky.social @shakirm.bsky.social Sina Fazelpour and Talia Gillis for putting together a great program as PCs!

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 25

You can also read the paper here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 25

These discrepancies raise important ethical concerns, particularly in high-stakes domains like healthcare. We offer recommendations for evaluation, reporting, and design of AI systems under label indeterminacy. Say hi to Jakob 👋 if you are in Athens and want to chat more about this!

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 25

In a case study on predicting neurological recovery in comatose patients, we show that different approaches to dealing with label indeterminacy can lead to models that (i) perform similarly on instances with known labels but (ii) issue very different predictions for instances with unknown labels.

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Maria De-Arteaga @mariadearteaga.bsky.social · Jun 25

We introduce the concept of label indeterminacy which arises in scenarios where labels are fundamentally unknowable for some instances, with no principled way to resolve ambiguity in the process of estimating them.

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