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Reposted by Abhilasha Ravichander

Myra Cheng @myra.bsky.social · 4d

AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.

Screenshot of paper title: Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence

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Maria Ryskina @mryskina.bsky.social · 4d

Interested in language models, brains, and concepts? Check out our COLM 2025 🔦 Spotlight paper!

(And if you’re at COLM, come hear about it on Tuesday – sessions Spotlight 2 & Poster 2)!

Paper title: Language models align with brain regions that represent concepts across modalities.
Authors: Maria Ryskina, Greta Tuckute, Alexander Fung, Ashley Malkin, Evelina Fedorenko.
Affiliations: Maria is affiliated with the Vector Institute for AI, but the work was done at MIT. All other authors are affiliated with MIT.
Email address: maria.ryskina@vectorinstitute.ai.

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Tiago Pimentel @tpimentel.bsky.social · 7d

LLMs are trained to mimic a “true” distribution—their reducing cross-entropy then confirms they get closer to this target while training. Do similar models approach this target distribution in similar ways, though? 🤔 Not really! Our new paper studies this, finding 4-convergence phases in training 🧵

Figure showing the four phases of convergence in LM training

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · 6d

My group at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems will be recruiting PhD students. The application deadline is December 31, 2025 (see lasharavichander.github.io/contact.html).

Please feel free to advertise other opportunities or add resources in this thread!

Abhilasha Ravichander

lasharavichander.github.io

Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · 6d

4. Some universities run graduate application support programs.

UW: cs.washington.edu/academics/gr...
CMU: cs.cmu.edu/academics/ph... [4/4]

Pre-Application Mentorship Service (PAMS)

Pre-Application Mentorship Service s a student-led initiative to support students from marginalized groups who are interested in grad school

cs.washington.edu

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · 6d

3. Some US universities may waive your application fees. You can find leads on these programs here (from 2023, compiled by @kaiserwholearns.bsky.social
): github.com/KaiserWhoLea...

Many European universities will not charge application fees at all. [3/4]

GitHub - KaiserWhoLearns/CS-PhD-Application-fee-waivers: Collections of CS PhD Application Fee Waivers of schools in North America

Collections of CS PhD Application Fee Waivers of schools in North America - GitHub - KaiserWhoLearns/CS-PhD-Application-fee-waivers: Collections of CS PhD Application Fee Waivers of schools in Nor...

github.com

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · 6d

2. A fairly comprehensive compilation of advice by
@shaily99.bsky.social , about graduate school: github.com/shaily99/adv... [2/4]

GitHub - shaily99/advice: A repository of links with advice related to grad school applications, research, phd etc

A repository of links with advice related to grad school applications, research, phd etc - shaily99/advice

github.com

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · 6d

It is PhD application season again 🍂 For those looking to do a PhD in AI, these are some useful resources 🤖:

1. Examples of statements of purpose (SOPs) for computer science PhD programs: cs-sop.org [1/4]

CS PhD Statements of Purpose

cs-sop.org is a platform intended to help CS PhD applicants. It hosts a database of example statements of purpose (SoP) shared by previous applicants to Computer Science PhD programs.

cs-sop.org

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Marzena Karpinska ✈️ COLM'25 @markar.bsky.social · Aug 20

Happy to see this work accepted to #EMNLP2025! 🎉🎉🎉

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Aug 12

I am recruiting emergency reviewers for *SEM 2025 (The 14th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics). Please DM me if you might be able to contribute a review within the next few days 🙏

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Reposted by Abhilasha Ravichander

Women in AI Research - WiAIR @wiair.bsky.social · Aug 8

We’re thrilled to congratulate Dr. Abhilasha Ravichander (@lasha.bsky.social) and her team for receiving the Outstanding Paper Award at #acl2025 for their work titled "HALoGEN: Fantastic LLM Hallucinations and Where to Find Them"! 🏆✨

#ACL #LLMs #Hallucination #WiAIR #WomenInAI

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Aug 6

See you soon on the other side!! Best of luck with wrapping up

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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · Aug 6

Status Update: I'm in the middle of my move from Denmark to Colorado! If I seem to be missing for the 1-2 weeks, that is the main reason. Picture me lost amidst suitcases, boxes, moving pods, and far too many books.

Copenhagen friends, I'm here for a couple more days! Please stop by P1 to say bye 🥺

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Women in AI Research - WiAIR @wiair.bsky.social · Aug 1

🎙️ New Women in AI Research #WiAIR episode coming Aug 6!

We talk to @lasha.bsky.social about LLM Hallucination, her award-winning HALoGEN benchmark, and how we can better evaluate hallucinations in language models.
👇 What’s inside:
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Speaker announcement: the new episode of the Women in AI Research WiAIR podcast is out on August 6th. Our guest is Dr. Abhilasha Ravichander, a postdoc at University of Washington and Assistant Professor at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.

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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft @maxplanck.de · Aug 1

Director at Max Planck - a unique position! The Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships is open now and can be submitted by the 31st of October 2025. ➡️ mpg.de/directors - Please share the Open Call among potential candidates.

Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships:
Expressions of interest can be submitted until 31 October 2025.

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Aug 1

Thank you so much, excited to move to Germany! I will be based in Kaiserslautern.

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 30

Super super thrilled that HALoGEN, our study of LLM hallucinations and their potential origins in training data, received an ✨Outstanding Paper Award✨ at ACL!

Joint work w/i Shrusti Ghela*, David Wadden, and Yejin Choi

bsky.app/profile/lash...

Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jan 31

We are launching HALoGEN💡, a way to systematically study *when* and *why* LLMs still hallucinate.

New work w/ Shrusti Ghela*, David Wadden, and Yejin Choi 💫

📝 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2501.08292
🚀 Code/Data: github.com/AbhilashaRav...
🌐 Website: halogen-hallucinations.github.io 🧵 [1/n]

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 28

Thank you Asia, super looking forward to collaborating!!

Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 27

Thank you Lucy!!

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 27

Thank you Ana, and thank you again for your generous and thoughtful mentorship!🫶

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Maria Ryskina @mryskina.bsky.social · Jul 24

Join Abhilasha's lab, she is an awesome researcher and mentor! I can attest, being her collaborator was great fun 🤩

Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 22

📣 Life update: Thrilled to announce that I’ll be starting as faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems this Fall!

I’ll be recruiting PhD students in the upcoming cycle, as well as research interns throughout the year: lasharavichander.github.io/contact.html

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Shaily @shaily99.bsky.social · Jul 23

People applying for NLP PhDs, work with Abhilasha -- she is awesome!!

Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 22

📣 Life update: Thrilled to announce that I’ll be starting as faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems this Fall!

I’ll be recruiting PhD students in the upcoming cycle, as well as research interns throughout the year: lasharavichander.github.io/contact.html

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 23

Thank you so much Chenhao!!

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 23

Thank you so much, Leonie!! Excited for life in Germany (and thanks also for being a duolingo buddy for my German 🤣)

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Abhilasha Ravichander @lasha.bsky.social · Jul 23

Thank you so much Marzena!!

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