Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Kanishka Misra 🌊 @kanishka.bsky.social · 1d

Come join us at the city of ACL!

Very happy to chat about my experience as a new faculty at UT Ling, come find me at #COLM2025 if you’re interested!!

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

UT Austin Linguistics is hiring in computational linguistics!

Asst or Assoc.

We have a thriving group sites.utexas.edu/compling/ and a long proud history in the space. (For instance, fun fact, Jeff Elman was a UT Austin Linguistics Ph.D.)

faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793

🤘

UT Austin Computational Linguistics Research Group – Humans processing computers processing humans processing language

sites.utexas.edu

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Jessy Li @jessyjli.bsky.social · 1d

We’re hiring faculty as well! Happy to talk about it at COLM!

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

UT Austin Linguistics is hiring in computational linguistics!

Asst or Assoc.

We have a thriving group sites.utexas.edu/compling/ and a long proud history in the space. (For instance, fun fact, Jeff Elman was a UT Austin Linguistics Ph.D.)

faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793

🤘

UT Austin Computational Linguistics Research Group – Humans processing computers processing humans processing language

sites.utexas.edu

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks, didn't know the history of his later life. Deleted and re-posted to omit.

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

Austin is a lovely city, and the department is wonderful and supportive. I've had a great experience here.

As you can see in the ad, the scope of what we are looking for is broad.

Happy to discuss this position or Ph.D. positions at #COLM2025 or offline!

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

UT Austin Linguistics is hiring in computational linguistics!

Asst or Assoc.

We have a thriving group sites.utexas.edu/compling/ and a long proud history in the space. (For instance, fun fact, Jeff Elman was a UT Austin Linguistics Ph.D.)

faculty.utexas.edu/career/170793

🤘

UT Austin Computational Linguistics Research Group – Humans processing computers processing humans processing language

sites.utexas.edu

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 1d

Austin is a lovely city, and the department is wonderful and supportive. I've had a great experience.

As you can see in the ad, the scope of we're looking for construe as computational linguistics is broad.

Happy to chat at #COLM2025 or offline about this faculty position and/or Ph.D. positions!

Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Sasha Boguraev @ COLM @sashaboguraev.bsky.social · 2d

I will be giving a short talk on this work at the COLM Interplay workshop on Friday (also to appear at EMNLP)!

Will be in Montreal all week and excited to chat about LM interpretability + its interaction with human cognition and ling theory.

Sasha Boguraev @ COLM @sashaboguraev.bsky.social · May 27

A key hypothesis in the history of linguistics is that different constructions share underlying structure. We take advantage of recent advances in mechanistic interpretability to test this hypothesis in Language Models.

New work with @kmahowald.bsky.social and @cgpotts.bsky.social!

🧵👇!

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 2d

And also @sriramp05.bsky.social at the PragLM Workshop! arxiv.org/html/2504.09...

On Language Models’ Sensitivity to Suspicious Coincidences

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Siyuan Song✈️COLM @siyuansong.bsky.social · 2d

Heading to #COLM2025 to present my first paper w/ @jennhu.bsky.social @kmahowald.bsky.social !

When: Tuesday, 11 AM – 1 PM
Where: Poster #75

Happy to chat about my work and topics in computational linguistics & cogsci!

Also, I'm on the PhD application journey this cycle!

Paper info 👇:

Siyuan Song✈️COLM @siyuansong.bsky.social · Mar 12

New preprint w/ @jennhu.bsky.social @kmahowald.bsky.social : Can LLMs introspect about their knowledge of language?
Across models and domains, we did not find evidence that LLMs have privileged access to their own predictions. 🧵(1/8)

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 2d

I’m at #COLM2025 from Wed with:

@siyuansong.bsky.social Tue am introspection arxiv.org/abs/2503.07513

@qyao.bsky.social Wed am controlled rearing: arxiv.org/abs/2503.20850

@sashaboguraev.bsky.social INTERPLAY ling interp: arxiv.org/abs/2505.16002

I’ll talk at INTERPLAY too. Come say hi!

Language Models Fail to Introspect About Their Knowledge of Language

There has been recent interest in whether large language models (LLMs) can introspect about their own internal states. Such abilities would make LLMs more interpretable, and also validate the use of s...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Kanishka Misra 🌊 @kanishka.bsky.social · 2d

Traveling to my first @colmweb.org🍁

Not presenting anything but here are two posters you should visit:

1. @qyao.bsky.social on Controlled rearing for direct and indirect evidence for datives (w/ me, @weissweiler.bsky.social and @kmahowald.bsky.social), W morning

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2503.20850

Both Direct and Indirect Evidence Contribute to Dative Alternation Preferences in Language Models

Language models (LMs) tend to show human-like preferences on a number of syntactic phenomena, but the extent to which these are attributable to direct exposure to the phenomena or more general propert...

arxiv.org

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 8d

Do you want to use AI models to understand human language?

Are you fascinated by whether linguistic representations are lurking in LLMs?

Are you in need of a richer model of spatial words across languages?

Consider UT Austin for all your Computational Linguistics Ph.D. needs!

mahowak.github.io

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 9d

Ever wonder how habituation works? Here's our attempt to understand:

A stimulus-computable rational model of visual habituation in infants and adults doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is the thesis of two wonderful students: @anjiecao.bsky.social @galraz.bsky.social, w/ @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social

conceptual schema for different habituation models

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 11d

At UT we just got to hear about this in a zoom talk from @sfeucht.bsky.social. I echo the endorsement:
cool ideas about representations in llms with linguistic relevance!

David Bau @davidbau.bsky.social · 11d

Who is going to be at #COLM2025?

I want to draw your attention to a COLM paper by my student @sfeucht.bsky.social that has totally changed the way I think and teach about LLM representations. The work is worth knowing.

And you can meet Sheridan at COLM, Oct 7!
bsky.app/profile/sfe...

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Jessy Li @jessyjli.bsky.social · 13d

Can AI aid scientists amidst their own workflows, when they do not know step-by-step workflows and may not know, in advance, the kinds of scientific utility a visualization would bring?

Check out @sebajoe.bsky.social’s feature on ✨AstroVisBench:

NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI) @nsfsimonscosmicai.bsky.social · 13d

Exciting news! Introducing AstroVisBench: A Code Benchmark for Scientific Computing and Visualization in Astronomy!

A new benchmark developed by researchers at the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins is testing how well LLMs implement scientific workflows in astronomy and visualize results.

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Harvey Lederman @harveylederman.bsky.social · 14d

Simon Goldstein and I have a new paper, “What does ChatGPT want? An interpretationist guide”.

The paper argues for three main claims.

philpapers.org/rec/GOLWDC-2 1/7

Simon Goldstein & Harvey Lederman, What Does ChatGPT Want? An Interpretationist Guide - PhilPapers

This paper investigates LLMs from the perspective of interpretationism, a theory of belief and desire in the philosophy of mind. We argue for three conclusions. First, the right object of study ...

philpapers.org

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 22d

The arxiv version is here! arxiv.org/abs/2501.17047

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

Language models can produce fluent, grammatical text. Nonetheless, some maintain that language models don't really learn language and also that, even if they did, that would not be informative for the...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

📣@futrell.bsky.social and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025)

William Matchin @wmatchin.bsky.social · 23d

Provocative piece and more interesting than most that have been written about this topic. I greatly encourage people to weigh in!

My own perspective is that while there is utility to LMs, the scientific insights are greatly overstated.

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

📣@futrell.bsky.social and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

www.cambridge.org

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

Yes, after some discussion, we decided to stick with the past tense like in the movie. Richard says it's an example of the prophetic perfect tense en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet....

Prophetic perfect tense - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

BBS also values publishing commentaries not just from the most relevant subarea of the article but from a wide variety of areas. So also consider submitting if you're further afield in some way!

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

The accepted manuscript is here: www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Have already heard plenty of spirited and useful disagreement on the piece. If that's you, especially considering submitting something! (Or if you want to say how much you agree with us, that's of course welcome too.)

www.cambridge.org

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

📣@futrell.bsky.social and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models

www.cambridge.org

4 10 50

Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · 23d

Congrats to Leonie on the new gig! Surely though she will mess our Texas summers.

Leonie Weissweiler @weissweiler.bsky.social · 23d

📢Life update📢

🥳I'm excited to share that I've started as a postdoc at Uppsala University NLP @uppsalanlp.bsky.social, working with Joakim Nivre on topics related to constructions and multilinguality!

🙏Many thanks to the Walter Benjamin Programme of the DFG for making this possible.

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Kyle Mahowald (COLM 2025) @kmahowald.bsky.social · Aug 26

Can AI introspect? Surprisingly tricky to define what that means! And also interesting to test. New work from @siyuansong.bsky.social, @harveylederman.bsky.social, @jennhu.bsky.social and me on introspection in LLMs. See paper and thread for a definition and some experiments!

Siyuan Song✈️COLM @siyuansong.bsky.social · Aug 26

How reliable is what an AI says about itself? The answer depends on whether models can introspect. But, if an LLM says its temperature parameter is high (and it is!)….does that mean it’s introspecting? Surprisingly tricky to pin down. Our paper: arxiv.org/abs/2508.14802 (1/n)

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