Glen Berman

Just in case anyone is confused about where I stand... you can be proudly and loudly against antisemitism and also against genocide.

@TroopsBane @MaryKostakidis Did you actually read the article? Pretty sure my stance on Zionism is clear. But thanks for demonstrating my point so perfectly.

What would it take for me to feel safe wearing a kippah after Bondi? | Glen Berman | The Guardian 'I do not feel safe wearing a kippah because I fear that to many Australians this would be interpreted as a sign that I support Israel. I do not want people to make assumptions about my politics based on my appearance..' 'So, what does Jewish safety mean after Bondi? The trouble is I do not want to live in a fortress. I do not want to live in a society where protest is banned, where politicians legislate what political slogans are acceptableand what are not, where armed police patrol Bondi and stand guard outside Jewish schools, where universities and cultural institutions are continually surveilled, where our borders are closed and migrant communities are treated as suspect. I do not want my safety to depend on poorly thought out authoritarian policies enacted in a kneejerk race to score political wins. And, make no mistake, these policies are poorly thought out. Banning legitimate political debate and protest will make it easier for extremists to radicalise people who already feel disenfranchised and silenced by our political system. Doubling down on the conflation of anti-Israel protest with antisemitism will only lead more people to disregard and discount threats to Jewish safety.' 'The trouble is, safety is a relational concept. One is not safe in the abstract; one is safe from something. Those who want us to live in a fortress are very clear here. For them, Jewish safety means safety from Palestinians, pro-Palestine protesters and Muslim migrants, and the path to Jewish safety is immigration reform. This is an Islamophobic, misinformed and dehumanising view of Jewish safety, but one we must engage with because it is being spread across our news and social media. It’s also a view of safety taken straight from the playbook of far-right populists: weaponise a legitimate fear to build a political coalition by attacking a minority group.' theguardian.com/australia-news…

@MaryKostakidis Thank you for sharing

After one too many conversations about the ways GenAI + peer review = shitshow for all involved, I dashed off this slightly polemic commentary on how I think we should talk about GenAI as an epistemic carcinogen. Welcome feedback! link.springer.com/article/10.100…

The role govt research funders & uni administrations play in incentivising academics to seek corporate investment is sometimes missed in discussions of corporate capture of #AI. My #AoIR2024 paper explored this - and the extended abstract is now up at: doi.org/10.5210/spir.v….

@BigDataSoc And, we argue that the field's research commitment is to the ML paradigm. ML provides ordering logic for managing the high-dimensional space between technical and applied research, between industry, government and academia, across national contexts. Welcome your feedback! 4/4

@BigDataSoc We argue the epistemic commitment of the field is to definitional debate regarding the field's object of study, AI. The field is orientated, literally, around the figure of AI & its value to researchers, rather than to AI as a scientific object of study. 3/4

Lucky to be back from a month-long break, with a paper out in @BigDataSoc! How do academics participate in the construction of ‘AI’ as a research field? We interviewed 90 university-based AI researchers in the UK, US, and Aus. Paper here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20… 1/4

Arg, typos.

Politicians weaponising antisemitism to pass repressive anti-protest laws are failing the Jewish community. These laws will not keep places of worship safe, yet will inflame the underlying dynamics driving antisemetism in Aus. #auspol theguardian.com/australia-news…

@evijit Sorry to not have been there in person. Such exciting work! Thank you so much to all the efforts the team put in to making the workshop happen.

And so long, Vancouver, you were gorgeous 🥺

EvalEval recap time! This was our first full day #NeurIPS2024 workshop that specifically looked at the emergent field of model evaluations with a deep and critical lens - and it went over incredibly well! 👇

I'm at @NeurIPSConf , presenting this work with @glenberman, @nedcpr and @wes_deng . Come check out our poster at the EvalEval workshop on Sunday, or DM me to chat!

@NeurIPSConf @nedcpr @wes_deng @benhutchinson Made it this far? Soon we’ll be starting an interview study with @renee_m_shelby to explore the development & use of taxonomies of societal impact . If you’d like to be kept in the loop please follow (glenberman.bsky.social). Read more: arxiv.org/abs/2410.22985 5/5

@NeurIPSConf @nedcpr @wes_deng @benhutchinson And, we argue that understanding societal impacts in this way means accepting that predictive evaluations of GenAI impacts are inherently limited. We suggest a ‘governance-first’ approach may be more effective at meaningfully managing harmful consequences of GenAI. 4/5

In a paper we’re workshopping this week at @NeurIPSConf, @nedcpr @wes_deng @benhutchinson & I ask: what is the model of societal impacts reflected in efforts to evaluate GenAI systems? Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.22985 Workshop: evaleval.github.io #NeurIPS2024 1/5

*drum roll* Grand reveal! AusSTS is returning to Naarm/Melbourne in 2025 so save the date for 9 - 11 July. The theme for #AusSTS2025 is Signals and Noises