Suresh Venkatasubramanian

@geomblog.bsky.social

4.3K followers 770 following 890 posts

Director, Center for Tech Responsibility@Brown. FAccT OG. AI Bill of Rights coauthor. Former tech advisor to President Biden @WHOSTP. He/him/his. Posts my own.

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Suresh Venkatasubramanian is an Indian computer scientist and professor at Brown University. In 2021, Prof. Venkatasubramanian was appointed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, advising on matters relating to fairness and bias in tech systems. He was formerly a professor at the University of Utah. He is known for his contributions in computational geometry and differential privacy, and his work has been covered by news outlets such as Science Friday, NBC News, and Gizmodo. He also runs the Geomblog, which has received coverage from the New York Times, Hacker News, KDnuggets and other media outlets. He has served as associate editor of the International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications and as the academic editor of PeerJ Computer Science, and on program committees for the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, the SIAM Conference on Data Mining, NIPS, SIGKDD, SODA, and STACS. .. more

Computer science 89%

Engineering 5%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 1h

The ACM has now issued an official statement arguing against a federal moratorium on state AI regulation.

www.acm.org/binaries/con...

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 11h

I'm watching it slowly and already like the 10 lessons slide.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Cyberlyra @cyberlyra.bsky.social · 20h

Here are my Ten Provocations for Studying and Crafting Reponsible Human-AI Teams (or, what 20 years of working with #NASA taught me about how we could be doing #AI completely differently, and much, much better):

youtu.be/28pkHL4IHE4?...

OTTRS Speaker Series: Janet Vertesi - November 21, 2025 | UMD INFO College

YouTube video by UMD INFO College

youtu.be

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, David H. Kaye

Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 20h

They should have worked this part into the headline:

Trump Promises Executive Order to Block State A.I. Regulations www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/u...

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Tom Stafford @tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 22h

Here's @mikecaulfield on AI and fact-checking:

We're not taking the fact-checking powers of AI seriously enough. It's past time to start.
https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/its-time-to-take-the-fact-checking

But I remain convinced that there is no future of verification and contextualization that doesn’t involve both better understanding of LLMs and more efficacious use of them. The three simple suggestions here — don’t prematurely dismiss errors as hallucinations, do use LLMs to surface the “unknown unknowns”, and do pay for the better models — are all pleas to engage more fully with this tech, and develop better (and more up-to-date) understandings of what they do well and what they do poorly, going beyond whether they fail or succeed to how they fail and how they succeed. This is also what we need to do in education. If we can start from there I’m confident our effort and engagement will be well-rewarded.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 1d

I think this is the nerd version of "I have memorized stats for all baseball teams this season". (also an impressively difficult task that I have witnessed first hand)

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 1d

But on that note I can tell you that I have seen multiple 11 year olds who had the stats blocks for the entire d&d monster manual memorized. It was almost scary how quickly they would correct me.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 1d

I'm not that good 😀😀😀

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 1d

Yes I have two. Also all our family SSNs and for some reason my frequent flyer number.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 1d

For the Tech Policy Press podcast, I spoke to Joris van Hoboken, a professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam and part of the core team of the Digital Services Act (DSA) Observatory. We discussed the overall politics of the EU's enforcement against Musk's X:

Unpacking the Politics of the EU's €120M Fine of Musk’s X | TechPolicy.Press

A conversation with Joris van Hoboken, a professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam and part of the DSA Observatory.

www.techpolicy.press

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 1d

Do you have a credit card number of yours memorized? I'm trying to see something...

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, David Darmofal

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 2d

Florida #AIBillofRights meets the Blueprint for an #AIBillofRights

🤝 Safe and Effective Systems
🤝 Algorithmic Discrimination Protections
🤝 Data Privacy
🤝 Notice and Explanation

bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/ostp/ai-bill...

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 2d

Philosophy is the category theory of the humanities.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Lachlan Kermode @ohrg.org · 4d

I agree that raw salary is definitely one of the reasons that public sector/advocacy technology struggles to be appealing to young technologists. An important part of the 'value alignment' piece, too, is creating contexts where grads feel like they have have the opportunity to grow technically.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Cas (Stephen Casper) @scasper.bsky.social · 4d

Did you know that one base model is responsible for 94% of model-tagged NSFW AI videos on CivitAI?

This new paper studies how a small number of models power the non-consensual AI video deepfake ecosystem and why their developers could have predicted and mitigated this.

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rebecca Sear , and 9 more Anna O. Law, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rebecca Sear, Roopika Risam, Sebastian Karcher, Brian Keegan, Lisa Diedrich, Lauren Hall‐Lew, Adele Perry, Hisham Zerriffi, Julie Rovner, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 5d

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 5d

excellent. My son came in at 73 :)

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 5d

Spotify thinks I'm 71. Damn you classical guitar music.

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, John McLaren, Rosemary A. Joyce , and 5 more Suresh Venkatasubramanian, John McLaren, Rosemary A. Joyce, David Rothschild, Jacob Montgomery, Mary L. Dudziak, Michael Jones‐Correa, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 5d

Democratic politicians need to stop accepting Trump’s white nationalist premise that immigration is bad and proudly and loudly make a positive case for why America’s identity and history as a nation of immigrants is so important.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 5d

it is really very well written.

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 5d

an important read for at least 2 reasons:

1. shows how big tech operates on intuitions and vibes and not rigorous research

2. this is a masterpiece in how to breakdown complex scientific concepts in simple language and elegant pros that captivate the lay reader

taranis.ie/datacenters-...

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.

There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.

taranis.ie

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 5d

that reasoning by the judge is just fantastic

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 5d

Last week @theverge.com published my essay exploring the limitations of large-language models. This week, that same essay is cited by a federal judge in Michigan to distinguish the process of human reasoning from what these models do. Very, very gratifying.

ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 5d

h/t @robertfreundlaw.bsky.social

holy shit, an accurate legal critique of LLMs. LLMs don't reason because they're just stitching together plausible-looking sentences indifferent to the content

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Janet Murray

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 5d

ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 5d

h/t @robertfreundlaw.bsky.social

holy shit, an accurate legal critique of LLMs. LLMs don't reason because they're just stitching together plausible-looking sentences indifferent to the content

What happens when ChatGPT cites to a real case but misstates what the case stands for?

That doesn't fly for Judge Behm in Michigan.

The court says that while a litigant could make the same error based on faulty reasoning, LLMs can't, because they can't reason.

And while a litigant might get away with similar overstatements because they could, perhaps, reason their way to showing how a case's stated holding might extend to novel situations, an LLM does not reason in the way a litigant must. To put it in a slightly different way, LLMs do not perform the metacognitive processes that are necessary to comply with Rule 11.

When an LLM overstates a holding of a case, it is just piecing together a plausible-looking sentence

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 5d

This is a fantastic and informative article (read the paper as well)

Lauren Chambers @laurenmarietta.bsky.social · 6d

I'm spending my PhD researching just this question of what careers in tech "for good" or "in the public interest" look like. Just published an op-ed this weekend about one option: go do tech and/or data work for a non-profit! localnewsmatters.org/2025/11/30/b...

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rebecca Sear , and 5 more Anna O. Law, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rebecca Sear, Roopika Risam, Brian Keegan, Lisa Diedrich, Lauren Hall‐Lew, Julie Rovner

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, David Murakami Wood

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5d

His “it’s not a eugenics company” tee is raising questions already answered by his shirt. www.cbsnews.com/news/nucleus...

Sadeghi says this "genetic optimization" allows parents to minimize disease while maximizing traits they prefer. However, critics have drawn comparisons to a different term: "eugenics."
"[It's not eugenics] by any stretch, because it's fundamentally about empowering people with information that they can use to give their child the best start in life," he said. "And yes, if you want 2 inches taller for your child, 3 inches taller, right, if you want a couple IQ-point difference, absolutely, by all means, do that. But I'm saying, you're really asking me here, you're asking me, what is life about? That's what you're really getting at when you talk about height and IQ, right, they're abstractions of life."

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Peter Thorne

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 5d

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.

There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.

taranis.ie

Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 6d

Every single one of these cases is a tragedy. But it cuts even deeper when you can see your own children in this face.

claudia irizarry aponte @clauirizarry.bsky.social · 6d

A 6-year-old boy is missing after ICE arrested him and his dad in NYC last week and shipped them off to separate facilities. www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/02/i... @thecity.nyc @gwynnefitz.bsky.social

ICE Arrested and Separated Chinese Father From 6-Year-Old Son, Advocates Say

The father and son were detained at an ICE check-in on Nov. 26, advocates say. The son’s location is currently unknown, while the father is being held at an upstate ICE facility.

www.thecity.nyc

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Lauren Chambers @laurenmarietta.bsky.social · 6d

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Jared Cram @jscram3254.bsky.social · 6d

Things are swell until Merriam’s French, know-it-all, boyfriend, Roget, shows up to win her back and ask that they get engaged (or, if you prefer, betrothed, affianced, or perhaps, intended).

Reposted by Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rosemary A. Joyce, Karen O’Donnell , and 3 more Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Rosemary A. Joyce, Karen O’Donnell, Kathleen Kennedy, Valentina Bold, Evan Roberts

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 6d

“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas”

Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.

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