Dinesh Ayyappan
@dineshayyappan.bsky.social
PhD @ Pompeu Fabra in AI Fairness
dineshayyappan.com
Former teacher
Georgia Tech, Boston Teacher Residency, Carnegie Mellon
US, India, Singapore, Spain
dineshayyappan.com
Former teacher
Georgia Tech, Boston Teacher Residency, Carnegie Mellon
US, India, Singapore, Spain
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
"[I]f disciplines move proactively, they can dramatize their central role, and show that our campuses are not just lovely places to scribble in blue books but sites where students discover things that aren’t yet contained in any model."
♥️
Approach AI with curiosity and a little wonder, not dread.
♥️
Approach AI with curiosity and a little wonder, not dread.
Wrote a short piece arguing that higher ed must help steer AI. TLDR: If we outsource this to tech, we outsource our whole business. But rejectionism is basically stalling. If we want to survive, schools themselves must proactively shape AI for education & research. [1/6, unpaywalled at 5/6] +
Opinion | AI Is the Future. Higher Ed Should Shape It.
If we want to stay at the forefront of knowledge production, we must fit technology to our needs.
www.chronicle.com
November 5, 2025 at 5:20 AM
"[I]f disciplines move proactively, they can dramatize their central role, and show that our campuses are not just lovely places to scribble in blue books but sites where students discover things that aren’t yet contained in any model."
♥️
Approach AI with curiosity and a little wonder, not dread.
♥️
Approach AI with curiosity and a little wonder, not dread.
AlphaSchool, a story
How it started:
“Motivation is 90 percent of what creates a great learning experience,” [co-founder] MacKenzie Price said.
How it's going:
How it started:
“Motivation is 90 percent of what creates a great learning experience,” [co-founder] MacKenzie Price said.
How it's going:
November 4, 2025 at 9:15 PM
AlphaSchool, a story
How it started:
“Motivation is 90 percent of what creates a great learning experience,” [co-founder] MacKenzie Price said.
How it's going:
How it started:
“Motivation is 90 percent of what creates a great learning experience,” [co-founder] MacKenzie Price said.
How it's going:
Fascinating! When I search for this article on bluesky, I see two different headlines:
apnews.com/article/cali...
"California governor signs law to protect kids from the risks of AI chatbots"
"California governor vetoes bill to restrict kids’ access to AI chatbots"
...
apnews.com/article/cali...
"California governor signs law to protect kids from the risks of AI chatbots"
"California governor vetoes bill to restrict kids’ access to AI chatbots"
...
October 14, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Fascinating! When I search for this article on bluesky, I see two different headlines:
apnews.com/article/cali...
"California governor signs law to protect kids from the risks of AI chatbots"
"California governor vetoes bill to restrict kids’ access to AI chatbots"
...
apnews.com/article/cali...
"California governor signs law to protect kids from the risks of AI chatbots"
"California governor vetoes bill to restrict kids’ access to AI chatbots"
...
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
The takeaway:
👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters.
👉 It alienates the progressive base.
👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns.
In short: it’s electoral self-harm.
👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters.
👉 It alienates the progressive base.
👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns.
In short: it’s electoral self-harm.
September 5, 2025 at 6:50 AM
The takeaway:
👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters.
👉 It alienates the progressive base.
👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns.
In short: it’s electoral self-harm.
👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters.
👉 It alienates the progressive base.
👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns.
In short: it’s electoral self-harm.
New advertising data privacy settings on LinkedIn for EU!
September 4, 2025 at 8:43 AM
New advertising data privacy settings on LinkedIn for EU!
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
"this thing is very good at a narrow subset of tasks it has optimized to be good at, often fails catastrophically at things outside its remit, and is always confident that it's right" feels pretty PhD-level intellect to me!
August 8, 2025 at 2:52 AM
"this thing is very good at a narrow subset of tasks it has optimized to be good at, often fails catastrophically at things outside its remit, and is always confident that it's right" feels pretty PhD-level intellect to me!
Now is a fine time to think about what makes two artificially intelligent systems the same or different. Really liked Andrea Ferrario’s paper on this from #FAccT25: arxiv.org/abs/2506.03233
August 8, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Now is a fine time to think about what makes two artificially intelligent systems the same or different. Really liked Andrea Ferrario’s paper on this from #FAccT25: arxiv.org/abs/2506.03233
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
The public meltdown happening between the world’s richest man 🙄 and the President of the United States 🙄🙄 once again begs the age-old question: are men simply too emotional to be in positions of power?
June 5, 2025 at 11:04 PM
The public meltdown happening between the world’s richest man 🙄 and the President of the United States 🙄🙄 once again begs the age-old question: are men simply too emotional to be in positions of power?
Need more communication like this! Many people don’t know where their tax dollars go.
Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺
June 3, 2025 at 1:41 AM
Need more communication like this! Many people don’t know where their tax dollars go.
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
“I can’t let you do that, Dave” but as a feature
May 22, 2025 at 9:47 PM
“I can’t let you do that, Dave” but as a feature
If you're considering a CS PhD but concerned about pursuing it in US, I'm happy to chat about EU options. I just did this and am starting a #PhD in Spain this year on fairness and interpretability of LMs.
DM me and ask about applications, funding, programs, etc. #academicsky #computerscience
DM me and ask about applications, funding, programs, etc. #academicsky #computerscience
May 23, 2025 at 2:06 AM
If you're considering a CS PhD but concerned about pursuing it in US, I'm happy to chat about EU options. I just did this and am starting a #PhD in Spain this year on fairness and interpretability of LMs.
DM me and ask about applications, funding, programs, etc. #academicsky #computerscience
DM me and ask about applications, funding, programs, etc. #academicsky #computerscience
Super excited to share that this Fall, I will be moving to Barcelona to start a PhD at Pompeu Fabra researching language model safety and interpretability around questions of bias and discrimination. I've been working on my balancing act: deep learning by day, beachside shoulder rides by sunset 😅
April 24, 2025 at 3:01 AM
Super excited to share that this Fall, I will be moving to Barcelona to start a PhD at Pompeu Fabra researching language model safety and interpretability around questions of bias and discrimination. I've been working on my balancing act: deep learning by day, beachside shoulder rides by sunset 😅
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
April 23, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
okay now that you all have gotten a taste of America's rational and predictable new trade policy, everyone who wants to build your new factories here just form an orderly line
April 9, 2025 at 6:23 PM
okay now that you all have gotten a taste of America's rational and predictable new trade policy, everyone who wants to build your new factories here just form an orderly line
Stunning. I would have loved having this on my wall when I was a physics teacher!!
NEW WORK! ✨
I got to create this 2-page spread for an article in @sciam.bsky.social on the puzzling lack of worlds outside our solar system in a certain size range; the "Radius Gap."
Visualizing several hundred exoplanets as a polar plot + contours.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/exop...
I got to create this 2-page spread for an article in @sciam.bsky.social on the puzzling lack of worlds outside our solar system in a certain size range; the "Radius Gap."
Visualizing several hundred exoplanets as a polar plot + contours.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/exop...
March 27, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Stunning. I would have loved having this on my wall when I was a physics teacher!!
Lots of coverage of the sentiment in this headline, but this article (by @eileenguo.bsky.social) also highlights the value of language-specialized models. So much nuance here ("slang usages and slurs, ... phrases written in a mix of languages) that's hard for people to grasp, let alone LMs.
Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models
Content moderation systems are being abandoned and defunded, leaving many countries looking for alternatives.
www.technologyreview.com
March 27, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Lots of coverage of the sentiment in this headline, but this article (by @eileenguo.bsky.social) also highlights the value of language-specialized models. So much nuance here ("slang usages and slurs, ... phrases written in a mix of languages) that's hard for people to grasp, let alone LMs.
It's great to see Spain moving on the EU AI Act's guidelines on transparency. Looks like these massive fines are only for high-risk systems, but it's a good step towards public safety.
Spain to impose massive fines for not labelling AI-generated content
Spain's government approved a bill on Tuesday imposing massive fines on companies that use content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) without properly labelling it as such, in a bid to curb the use of so-called "deepfakes".
www.reuters.com
March 27, 2025 at 1:56 AM
It's great to see Spain moving on the EU AI Act's guidelines on transparency. Looks like these massive fines are only for high-risk systems, but it's a good step towards public safety.
"Upper management does not understand what AI is and thinks it will solve untold problems. Junior devs rely on it too much without understanding their code first."
I imagine something like this is pervasive across roles and industries other than tech / software engineering too.
I imagine something like this is pervasive across roles and industries other than tech / software engineering too.
March 27, 2025 at 1:46 AM
"Upper management does not understand what AI is and thinks it will solve untold problems. Junior devs rely on it too much without understanding their code first."
I imagine something like this is pervasive across roles and industries other than tech / software engineering too.
I imagine something like this is pervasive across roles and industries other than tech / software engineering too.
This is so amazing for science!
A very exciting day for open-source AI! We're releasing our biggest open source model yet -- OLMo 2 32B -- and it beats the latest GPT 3.5, GPT 4o mini, and leading open weight models like Qwen and Mistral. As usual, all data, weights, code, etc. are available.
March 15, 2025 at 6:19 AM
This is so amazing for science!
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
I am too tired to write any more blogs this week but I listened to an hour of this and the quick summary of this for anyone interested so you do not have to listen to it is like:
January 10, 2025 at 7:19 PM
I am too tired to write any more blogs this week but I listened to an hour of this and the quick summary of this for anyone interested so you do not have to listen to it is like:
I’ve only barely started The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt, but I can already see how relevant it is to modern scientific and political life as both a diagnosis of how we got here and a guide to moving forward.
January 11, 2025 at 5:06 AM
I’ve only barely started The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt, but I can already see how relevant it is to modern scientific and political life as both a diagnosis of how we got here and a guide to moving forward.
Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan
NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold.
We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940.
2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.
We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940.
2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.
January 10, 2025 at 8:04 AM
NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold.
We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940.
2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.
We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940.
2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.
