Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

23K followers 810 following 1.9K posts

Researcher trying to shape AI towards positive outcomes. ML & Ethics +birds. Generally trying to do the right thing. TIME 100 | TED speaker | Senate testimony provider | Navigating public life as a recluse.
Former: Google, Microsoft; Current: Hugging Face .. more

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Margaret Mitchell is a computer scientist who works on algorithmic bias and fairness in machine learning. She is most well known for her work on automatically removing undesired biases concerning demographic groups from machine learning models, as well as more transparent reporting of their intended use. .. more

Computer science 94%

Psychology 5%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 4h

Effective Altruism -- not ethical.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 8h

Grateful to have been selected as a member of the @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social Oversight Board. Ada plays a unique and critical role in the tech world, championing people-centered approaches to AI development.
Couldn't be more excited to support and contribute to their important work.

Ada Lovelace Institute @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · 17h

The Ada Lovelace Institute is delighted to announce that it has appointed three new members to its Oversight Board:

- Ed Humpherson
- Margaret Mitchell
- Suresh Venkatasubramanian.

Find out more: www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/news/new-ove...

New Oversight Board members appointed to the Ada Lovelace Institute

New Board members will work closely with Ada and the Nuffield Foundation to support the Institute’s strategic development and long-term sustainability

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

Wasn’t me!!

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

A few people (Emily included) have pointed out that “independent scholar” might be a more appropriate term.
(Not for me, though, unfortunately, I am in tech and am part of tech dev overall, so am not rightly “independent”—I suppose I’m just a non-hegemonic scholar.)

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

lol, that may indeed be part of the point. =)
I’m a big fan of historical footnotes for those interested in exploring the human side of the larger-than-life tales.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

s/dictate/analyze/

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

Yikes, there’s some offensive stuff in here about me and my other co-authors of the SP 🦜 paper. Worth revisiting your assumptions (declarations) about us on that one.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12h

Co-author of the Stochastic Parrots 🦜 paper here. Confirming it is not derogatory. Seconding everything else @emilymbender.bsky.social articulates here.
(If you want to believe it’s derogatory, it’s worth reflecting on how that speaks to your own beliefs.)

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 12h

Hey Benjamin, you're getting some suff wrong here, starting with framing me and my colleagues as "AI skeptics". It's true that we call BS on claims of AI, AGI, LLMs understanding etc. But "AI skeptic" is a term that resides within the AI booster's frame of view, not ours.

>>

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 12h

And you're right that the term stochastic parrots is not derogatory but you are 100% wrong when you claim that we meant it to be.

>>

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 12h

Screencap from blog post linked in quoted skeet. Text: Now for some controversy: Describing LLMs as stochastic parrots is not inherently derogatory. I think many people get tripped up here because they know that the originators of the metaphor, all of them prominent AI skeptics, meant it that way. Fine, agreed. But the cool thing about being sentient humans is that we can independently think about whether the metaphor is apt as a description of what’s happening under the hood of an LLM (yet another metaphor). Again, yes! It’s great, as close to perfect as we might find in two words for describing how these weird new things operate. It’s math, not magic.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Margaret Mitchell

Ada Lovelace Institute @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · 17h

New Oversight Board members appointed to the Ada Lovelace Institute

New Board members will work closely with Ada and the Nuffield Foundation to support the Institute’s strategic development and long-term sustainability

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, John R. Hutchinson, Linda Martín Alcoff

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 1d

Can’t believe we are still doing this

Screenshot from The Onion reading; “Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition of Concentration Camp Sign of Healthy Society.”

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 2d

The "(no ext reference)" just gets me. 😆

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 2d

🪶

Nadieh Bremer @nadiehbremer.com · 4d

📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on!

“Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤

A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Nadieh Bremer @nadiehbremer.com · 4d

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 5d

Posts from @weratedogs.com continue not to disappoint.

WeRateDogs @weratedogs.com · 6d

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 5d

More reports of Gmail turning over email content to ICE are coming out now.
techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/g...

Google sent personal and financial information of student journalist to ICE | TechCrunch

The tech giant handed over the personal information of a journalist and student who attended a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024. This is the latest example of ICE using its controversial subpoena power...

techcrunch.com

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Shantha Mohan, Ph.D., DTM @shlead.bsky.social · 6d

"If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else." — Toni Morrison.

Wishing you a good evening and a great Wednesday! 💙💜

#ColorADay #BlueTue
#dailyflowers 🌱
#flowerreport
#bloomscrolling

Senetti® Deep Blue Cineraria.

Senetti® Deep Blue Cineraria flowers and green leaves.
Camera: iPhone 15 Pro.
February 10, 2026. At a local nursery.

Reposted by Meredith Broussard, Anna O. Law, Jason Mittell , and 31 more Meredith Broussard, Anna O. Law, Jason Mittell, Amanda Lotz, Mary Bosworth, Nandita Sharma, Margaret Mitchell, Will Jennings, Peter Thorne, Steven French, David Feldman, Martin Tomko, Peter Campbell, Jacob Montgomery, Joseph Schafer, Paul E. Smaldino, Linda Martín Alcoff, Michelle Everson, Melanie C. Green, Michael Zimmer, Stephen D. Murphy, Graham Webster, Juan Moreno‐Cruz, Samantha Brennan, Michael D. McDonald, Jessica Vitak, Woodrow Hartzog, Sam Kamin, Meredith Farkas, Magda Teter, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Evan Roberts, David Neilson, Kevin Grant

WeRateDogs @weratedogs.com · 6d

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Ann Bartow, Joanna L. Grossman , and 1 more Margaret Mitchell, Ann Bartow, Joanna L. Grossman, Anne Hilborn

Pop Crave @popcrave.com · 7d

Chappell Roan is leaving her talent agency led by Casey Wasserman after he appeared in the Epstein files.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 7d

I find studies that ask “is this useful?” to be more meaningful. We don’t have to paint a broad “AI” umbrella, then concern ourselves with conflating them with “humans” to analyze the utility of different technologies.

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 7d

If your study is framed as asking whether "AI" does X as well as humans do, it's fundamentally misguided and I'd argue not scientifically sound.

A short 🧵>>

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 7d

If your study is framed as asking whether "AI" does X as well as humans do, it's fundamentally misguided and I'd argue not scientifically sound.

A short 🧵>>

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Dorothy Bishop, Daniel W. Drezner , and 1 more Margaret Mitchell, Dorothy Bishop, Daniel W. Drezner, Catherine J. Frieman

Victor Von Doomscroll @redderbeanpaste.bsky.social · 10d

i think we all need to step back and realize that peak art was made when neolithic pot in the shape of a pig was fired

a round pottery piece with pig eyes and a snout

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 10d

This older piece from Anthropic's CEO on developing a creator-compensation economic model is incredible to see. Disagree with some things, but it's fantastic to see this level of thinking at the intersection of ethics and profit.
Source: www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058...

An Economic Model for Compensating Data Producers
One of the controversies over Copilot, related to but distinct from concerns about the model spitting out copyrighted data, is a feeling that large corporations (MSFT and OpenAl) are exploiting the open source work of developers and using it extract concentrated profits. The same could be said about GPT-3 being trained partially on fanfiction books, or for that matter about models being trained on human feedback, for which workers are paid near-minimum wage. I think this is a real and important concern, especially when considered as part of an overall trend for Al progress to concentrate wealth, increase inequality, and in the long run automate labor. Zooming very far out, what is happening macroeconomically is that distributed human labor is being used to train Al models by large, centralized actors, who concentrate the resulting profits while in the long run making the human labor obsolete. It seems like the default trajectory is for one of the following things to happen:

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 11d

…And we’re live! Interested in *evaluation* and *language generation*? Submit a paper, come join us, celebrate the career of @ehudreiter.bsky.social: A founding pioneer of grounded language generation who has consistently shared clear-eyed insights about the state of the field.
retroeval.github.io

Symposium on Natural Language Generation Evaluations

RetroEval 2026 Aberdeen, United Kingdom, 1-2 June, 2026

retroeval.github.io

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12d

Yes, agree re: supporting good journalism!!
A lot of people I like are gone from WaPo, but good call there may be others who are awesome.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12d

Time to get Nitasha's latest work then cancel a WaPo subscription (if you have it). =/

nitasha tiku @nitasha.bsky.social · 12d

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 12d

Yay! Noooooooooooooooooo.

nitasha tiku @nitasha.bsky.social · 12d

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Carissa Véliz @carissaveliz.bsky.social · 12d

"You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right." "I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart." - Rosa Parks, born today in 1913 (as Hertford's College Chaplain reminded us.

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