Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

@techreview, this article is the perfect illustration of why I quit my subscription. I can understand that somewhere in the world there is some tech nerd who could come up with such an absurd idea. I will never accept that a title like this has to do with any self-respecting tech journalism. And here I see the failure of the entire editorial process of an institution that should know much better. This is only the worst title in a long series of articles lacking any critical reflection about GenAI whatsoever.

imho, this image - the MAU curve of lemmy is the big news on the #fediverse. While also #mastodon and other platforms experienced peaks last summer, #lemmy is the only one that is consistently on the rise in 2024. Arguably, this is thanks to particular #affordances, like the fact that older posts of wider appreciation do not get overwhelmed in feeds.

More charts at https://fedidb.org

Our paper on the values found in fairy tales from some European countries has been published. We studied how values are explicitly present in tales from Germany, Italy and Portugal using various NLP techniques, but most notably Word2Vec and Word Embedding with a Compass. We visualise synchronic semantic variation to show certain differences based on observations of the corpus, some of them already observed in previous literature. A discussed example in our findings is how motherhood in Germany is strongly related to generosity, whereas in Italy and Portugal it has stronger relationship to wisdom.

Fulltext available at: https://aclanthology.org/2023.nlp4dh-1.8/

@folklore @linguistics @bookstodon

At the University of Milan we are seeking a research fellow to participate in the “MetaLing Corpus: Creating a corpus of English linguistics metalanguage from the 16th to the 18th century” project:
https://expertise.unimi.it/resource/project/PRIN202223AANDR%5F01

Through archival research and corpus compilation, the project aims to assess the genres and text-types involved in the circulation of linguistic knowledge, and to throw light onto unconventional texts and voices besides the major works and figures on which scholarship has naturally concentrated. The project is divided into three phases 1) collection of texts, 2) building the corpus, 3) lexical extraction and database creation, combining human and computational tools. The core part of our study will involve the analysis of the terminology, discursive strategies and descriptive metaphors used to describe and compare languages in English, in diachronic perspective.

The successful applicant will work with the project team to identify relevant primary materials and build an electronic corpus of texts. The post is for someone with a postgraduate degree in Linguistics, English, Computer Science or related discipline. Candidates may or may not have a doctorate at the time of application. The researcher will have the opportunity to contribute to the project database, work in archives, and develop academic writing in individual and joint papers.

Post: Postdoctoral research fellow, Early stage researcher or 0-4 yrs (Post graduate)
Location: Milan (on-site)
Duration: 18 months, fixed-term/contract
Salary: EUR 21,888 per annum
Closes: 4th January 2024
Interview date: 16th January 2024

Full details and instructions on how to apply: https://www.unimi.it/it/ricerca/ricerca-lastatale/fare-
ricerca-da-noi/assegni-e-borse/bandi-assegni-di-ricerca/bando-di-tipo-b-dottssa-andreani-id-6082

We'd appreciate if you boost or forward to any potentially interested candidates. In case of questions or difficulties with understanding Italian (language or bureaucracy), do get in touch with me or the provided contacts. Further details in the attached file.

@histodons #literature #history #postdoc

Finally, after a first exploration, one might feel ready to see the big picture, i.e. fusion. Of course after that one might tbacktrack to drill back into particular values.

One way to show multidimensional (nominal data, except for years) that we've found useful is the following graph. But more generally we need visualisation techniques that allow for multidimensional nominal data. For two dimensions heatmaps could be a good candidate. It gets more complicated with more dimensions. Alluvial diagrams could turn handy here

The second pattern is generalisation. It says we should fix our dimension of interest and and vary anything independent of it. We do this by focusing on individual authors and looking of other dimensions (e.g. the interplay between Italian and UK publishers). In the example here, we consider Vasco Pratolini who is the only author from the above graph that has more than one publisher in both countries. Of course this graph is just a start of an enquiry as to why this occurs. In our case we actually had to look into the archives of publisher exchange to get an understanding, but that's beyond the topic here.

PS: Sorry for the transparent backgrounds of images that don't work well on dark app themes. The graphs can be seen better in the paper which is at the end of this thread

These patterns of variation consider aspects of phenomenon, which at a simple level could be seen as dimensions of data. The simplest of the three patterns is contrast, the idea that to start understanding a phenomenon one needs, to consider each of its dimensions in isolation (i.e. variating it while keeping others fixed). Our example is from translation of Italian novels from the post-war period into the UK market. We apply contrast on authors. Our way to fix other dimensions is by counting them

Please do check out our poster on explicit references of values in folk tales where we compare the values (Schwartz) in 3 corpora from three European countries. We evidence how between Germany, Portugal and Italy there are common traditions (emphasis on the values of Universalism, Tradition,...), but also cultural peculiarities, e.g. different ways to convey such values #CHR2023

Full text at https://tales.ko64eto.com/ref

Let me share the takeaway from Richard McElreath's keynote (at least for me) #CHR2023

Happy to be invited to present at the 1st edition of the #AIxEDU workshop held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Italian association for AI #AIxIA https://aixedu.pa.itd.cnr.it

The topic was:
The Need for AI that Helps Teach People How to Learn
A summary is available on the workshop website:
https://aixedu.pa.itd.cnr.it/invited-speakers
The full slides with references:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1o0WWS-KXPpr9h-PY07OGN5m68dapGWtTuVFviHABuSA

This week at the #INTERACT conference I will present our research into Online Collaborative Story Writing systems.

We studied how people collaborate to write shared narratives, considering works since 2012. Among others, we review works by @andresmh @Riedl @msbernst

We put all this in perspective adapting Lowry's 2004 Taxonomy of Collaborative Writing to online authoring of narrative.

Our review shows how focus is on rudimentary activities like writing and revising. Yet, other important activities and roles such as outlining, leadership, facilitation, etc. remain left out. This is probably due to these tasks commonly remaining implicit in individual authoring. Yet, arguably these are what makes good narratives stand out.

Full-text with temporary free access at
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-42286-7_5

I find these timelines very useful. Only that for me the interesting starts with Parti and Midjourney v4 (there's also a thing called Structured Diffusion Guidance), because these models also work on scene composition. Everything before that is pure randomness #text2image #AIart

Image from https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07521v1

RT @BenDoBrown@twitter.com

Last week I spoke at @journalismfest@twitter.com on how open-source intelligence is used to combat propaganda and uncover new information during Russia's war on Ukraine. Thank you for having me.

I promised to share a list of links to tools and sources. Here it is (I hope it helps) 👇

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/BenDoBrown/status/1650533044145586186

RT @rao2z@twitter.com

Interestingly, I was just telling someone today how several of the papers on "LLMs for Task Planning by Prompting" are rife with the Clever Hans effect (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans ). I guess I will have to do a thread.. 2/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/rao2z/status/1648876535070457856

RT @mcxfrank@twitter.com

What does it mean for a large language model (LLM) to "have" a particular ability? Developmental psychologists argue about these questions all the time and have for decades. There are some ground rules. 🧵

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/mcxfrank/status/1645459383554568193

RT @RSprugnoli@twitter.com

1st workshop on Ancient Language Processing (at RANLP-2023, Varna Bulgaria)

Paper submission due: July 3, 2023
Date: September 7, 2023
Website: https://www.ancientnlp.com/alp2023/
#NLProc #digiclass @ranlp2023@twitter.com

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/RSprugnoli/status/1640995540920856576

RT @Mylovanov@twitter.com

I asked people why they think Russians did it. “To use us as a protection against the Ukrainian army” is the only answer I heard. Russians paraded kids in front of the building when Ukrainian drones were nearby. 9/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1643614587353280514

RT @babiejenks@twitter.com

Photos of Britney Spears on magazine covers are literally how I realized Americans couldn't tell the difference between a rictus and a smile.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/babiejenks/status/1442996955257479168

RT @ICFJ@twitter.com

Journalist @nameesarnous@twitter.com founded a magazine about, for, & from women in the Arab world. But her outlet was struggling financially. So she joined Elevate, ICFJ’s news business hub. Through her mentorship, she decided to develop 2 new revenue streams: https://buff.ly/3neLpVG

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/ICFJ/status/1643101087623176194

RT @PopovaProf@twitter.com

Stumbled upon this 2003 quote from Ukr president Kuchma. Ru had just tried to take over the Ukr island of Tuzla in the Kerch Straight and build a dam to connect it to Ru mainland. Perhaps Pu was already planning his Kerch Bridge, which indeed passes over and is anchored in Tuzla.

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/PopovaProf/status/1642737144866172928