Jess Sorrell
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optimistsinc.bsky.social
Jess Sorrell
@optimistsinc.bsky.social
Assistant prof at JHU CS. Interested in theory of ML, privacy, cryptography. All cat pictures my own and do not represent the cats of my employer
Come join us for a workshop on productive use of AI for research and research-adjacent tasks!
Announcing the 7th Learning Theory Alliance mentoring workshop on November 20. Fully free & virtual!

Theme: Harnessing AI for Research, Learning, and Communicating

Ft @aaroth.bsky.social @andrejristeski.bsky.social @profericwong.bsky.social @ktalwar.bsky.social &more
November 7, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Come hang out with us at COLT 2025 and think about crafting and communicating your research agenda!
📣Join us at COLT 2025 in Lyon for a community event!
📅When: Mon, June 30 | 16:00 CET
What: Fireside chat w/ Peter Bartlett & Vitaly Feldman on communicating a research agenda, followed by mentorship roundtable to practice elevator pitches & mingle w/ COLT community!
let-all.com/colt25.html
June 24, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
Join #HopkinsDSAI for the Johns Hopkins Celebrates Women in Data Science and AI event on April 9 from 12-4 p.m.

Register to celebrate leading women in the fields of data science and AI with a keynote speaker, panel discussion, and poster session: ai.jhu.edu/event/johns-...
Johns Hopkins Celebrates Women in Data Science and AI - Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute
Join the Data Science and AI Institute on Wednesday, April 9, at the Scott-Bates Commons Salon A/B for an empowering event celebrating leading women in the fields of data science…
ai.jhu.edu
March 31, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
DC-area folks: lots going on right now, but this rally to save PEPFAR is worth a look. The cruelties and robbery are worth fighting in aggregate and important to fight in specific. pepfarreport.org/event
Foggy Bottom Demonstration Friday
Rubio promised waivers, but the system is broken. Join us Friday, March 7th, for a protest to restore PEPFAR at Foggy Bottom.
pepfarreport.org
March 5, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
Alex Tolbert is running a stellar conference next week at Emory that I am bummed to be missing out on. The speaker lineup is especially remarkable- spanning theoretical computer science to machine learning to law to philosophy. You should go and enjoy it for me. 39893947.hs-sites.com/aiethicsconf...
February 25, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Dear Google search. I don't mean private parties. I never mean private parties. I am neither hip nor a socialite. It's private parities. I meant what I said. Every time. Thank you.
February 24, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Anyone have a favorite proof of Hoeffding's lemma that's more intuitive than applying the AMGM inequality to a term of a Taylor expansion of a function plucked from The Land of It Made Things Work? I'm happy to trade constants for intuition/simplicity
January 22, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Yessssss I got a lecture hall with sliding chalkboards, this rules
January 20, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Just wrote my first letter of recommendation for a student 😀. Anyone coming into my replies with, "just wait until the 100th," energy WILL BE BLOCKED, please just let me have this.
December 16, 2024 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
If you are at #NeurIPS, we will be presenting this work (#6610) from 4:30-7:30PM today and would love to chat! @marcelhussing.bsky.social @optimistsinc.bsky.social @aaroth.bsky.social
Actual content post: Have not talked much about this work yet but we have a paper on Oracle-Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Max Value Ensembles at this year's #NeurIPS. We provide an efficient algorithm to ensemble policies given a value function oracle. arxiv.org/abs/2405.16739
Oracle-Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Max Value Ensembles
Reinforcement learning (RL) in large or infinite state spaces is notoriously challenging, both theoretically (where worst-case sample and computational complexities must scale with state space cardina...
arxiv.org
December 12, 2024 at 5:29 PM
Thanks to all the mentors who took the time to share their advice and expertise with WiML Workshop attendees at NeurIPS!!
December 11, 2023 at 6:24 PM
The calm before the WiML Workshop storm
December 10, 2023 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
I will be at NeurIPS. I will be giving keynotes and presenting work:
- WiML keynote
- Paper on Diffusion model bias led by
@sashamtl.bsky.social (who won't be there ), with Yacine Jernite
- Keynote at the Regulatable ML workshop, with
Yacine Jernite
See you there?
November 30, 2023 at 6:30 AM
Who all's going to NeurIPS next week? If you'll be around on Monday, come check out the joint affinity group poster session in the Great Hall from 3:30-4:30pm! There will be a lot of great work to peruse and researchers to meet!
sites.google.com/umich.edu/wi...
December 5, 2023 at 1:20 PM
Just heard a Roosevelt Institute economist say, "the question of the bad vibes is actually an international question," and I for one am grateful our greatest minds are looking into why, precisely, the vibes have been off (globally) and what we might do about it
November 17, 2023 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
We've got a new paper in which we solve Principal/Agent problems without any common prior assumptions. The abstract has some CS Jargon, so I asked ChatGPT to translate it for 1) an economic theorist, 2) a "development economist in a business school", and 3) a bright 3rd grader.
November 15, 2023 at 1:33 AM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
📢 Next TCS+ talk next week! Wed 11/15, 10:00am PT, Palak Jain and Satchit Sivakumar from Boston University will tell us about "The Price of Differential Privacy under Continual Observation."

Details: tcsplus.wordpress.com/2023/11/10/t...

Register (optional): docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
TCS+ talk: Wednesday, November 15 — Palak Jain and Satchit Sivakumar, Boston University
The next TCS+ talk will take place this coming Wednesday, November 15th at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (10:00 AM Pacific Time, 19:00 Central European Time, 18:00 UTC). Palak Jain and Satchit Sivakumar from B...
tcsplus.wordpress.com
November 10, 2023 at 7:41 PM
Extremely disappointed that I'm not staying in NH long enough to visit the American Precision Museum, which is undoubtedly cool and weird, and so I will never learn what this is.
November 10, 2023 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
what is the most sensible report/guideline you recently read on the risks of AI and recommendations on how to manage/regulate it???

pls repost
November 9, 2023 at 11:10 AM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
Many Mississippi residents with past felony convictions remain barred from voting *for life* even though a federal court recently ruled that the practice is cruel, unusual, and racist
After “Glimmer of a Moment,” Mississippi Once Again Shuts Out Aspiring Voters
As the state votes next month, many residents with past felony convictions remain barred from voting for life even though a federal court ruled in August that the practice is cruel, unusual, and racia...
boltsmag.org
October 29, 2023 at 3:32 PM
Tried to go to my visitor office, but it was filled with sleeping undergrads who were all tuckered out from the hackathon that I guess is happening today? I let them rest, but as payment, I am helping myself to some funky fresh GNU stickers, coffee, and snacks #snackathon23
October 21, 2023 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Jess Sorrell
📊 New week, new (bi)weₐᵉkly quiz, and new format! It's been a while!

This week, we're looking at NUMBERS, and how to (badly) estimate them! I have written 5 snippets of code, each meant to estimate (via some random🎲sampling) a value. Your goal: figure out which, and why.

1/
October 13, 2023 at 11:25 PM
Working from train. See you soon, Boston!
October 18, 2023 at 8:06 PM