Yair Zick

CS Professor at UMass, trying to design well-behaved and socially responsible algorithms and children... Opinions shared here are my own.

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@omerlev @yorambac It’s an agent eat agent world out there!

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

I am telling my students about Winograd schema, and told them that modern LLMs are generally pretty good at solving them. One of my students tried DeepSeek and got this... interesting result?

[Kaidi Wu, Ph.D. @kaidi_wu]

Americans have no idea how difficult legal immigration is for "high-skilled immigrants".

I have 4 degrees incl a PhD. Einstein visa. 250K salary at FAANG. Lived in this country since I was a teenager.

I won't be able to obtain citizenship until middle age

Guide for Intl PhDs🧵

[Yannai A. Gonczarowski @YannaiGonch]

"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘨𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯
𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴
𝘕𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦"

Exactly a year ago, the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust took place.

More than 1100 were murdered in this massacre, in which also employees of the "United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees" @UNRWA participated. In addition, more than 250 hostages were abducted that day from their homes or from a music festival, during a Saturday morning on a Jewish holiday. Over a hundred of those abducted are still held by Hamas and by others in Gaza and not allowed any Red Cross @ifrc visits. These include then-9-month-old baby Kfir Bibas, who has by now spent most of his life in captivity, as well as five American citizens still in captivity. For more than half of the hostages, we don't even know whether they are alive.

The next day, Hezbollah—a terrorist organization from Lebanon, a country with whom Israel has no internationally recognized territorial dispute—has started raining rockets on the north of Israel, which it continues non-stop to this day, and a year later, still many of those living in the north of Israel cannot safely return home.

Today is a day of mourning. Whoever celebrates "resistance" more today than on other days is celebrating the rape, murder, and mutilation of Jewish people. Whoever marks "a year of genocide in Gaza" today out of all days despite the Israeli defensive counterstrike on Gaza not starting on October 7, both urgently needs a history lesson on what genocide is, and is celebrating the rape and murder of Jewish people.

Mourning today doesn't make anyone anti-Palestinian; in contrast, bashing Jews today is extremely telling.

Let them go. Bring them home.

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@TaliaRinger Mazal Tov Talia!

[Arpita Biswas @arpitabiswas777]

📢 Don't miss out on an exceptional lineup of speakers and panelists at the Computational Fair Division (CFD) workshop @IJCAIconf on Aug 5 https://t.co/2kMqtCdwV9
Many thanks to #AIJ for their generous suppory.
#IJCAI2024 @aijjournal #AI @hadi_hoss @tweeting_sanj @YairZick

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@EshelGeffen כשרה?

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

Due to the massive uptick in submissions we have really junior authors (high school track anyone?) and reviewers. So, authors/reviewers with no understanding of scientific expectations put minimal effort into their works. The peer review ecosystem needs a serious overhaul.

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

Science is built on trust. We trust authors to not cheat, reviewers to do their job, SPCs/ACs to oversee things. But - everyone is overworked, underpaid, and under immense pressure to publish >

[Peyman Milanfar @docmilanfar]

Amazing review verbatim - I'm speechless.
The computer vision community should be ashamed that this is the state of our peer review system

"Strengths:
A good analysis is performed and some conclusion are been drawn.

"Weaknesses:
These more of an incremenatal work no detailed novelty is presenat.

"Paper rating (pre-rebuttal):
Strong Reject

"5. Justification of rating
As tghe novelty is low I recomend a strong reject."

@eccvconf #ECCV2024

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@docmilanfar @GPTZeroAI Not justifying this at all - just that there’s a slight difference between using these tools to overcome language barriers and outright fabrication. Both reviews are terrible regardless.

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@docmilanfar @GPTZeroAI In the 2nd reviewer’s defense, I know some people input text in their native language and have ChatGPT translate it for them. Both are awful regardless, you should report this to the ACs. Sorry to see this…

[Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy]

Lots of people in CS are (almost surely) GPT-ing their peer reviews
https://t.co/bICmqlunNA

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@johnpdickerson The Google Doc titled "Fraud" feels a bit cartoonish I gotta say. Like something the Wyle E. Coyote would send.

[Hadi Hosseini @hadi_hoss]

Games, Agents, and Incentives workshop (GAIW) @aamas2024 will be in New Zealand this time. Do not forget to submit your papers:

Webpage: https://t.co/tV1N862Vwk
Deadline: February 26, 2024.
Notification: March 28, 2024.

@YairZick
@omerlev
@econD47
@harisazizk
@nsmattei

[Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences @manningcics]

Congrats to PhD students @AliNaseh6 and @kalpeshk2011, along with Associate Professors @MohitIyyer and Amir @Houmansadr, for winning a Distinguished Paper Award for “Stealing the Decoding Algorithms of Language Models” at @acm_ccs 2023! 🙌 Read the paper: https://t.co/exjU2oDUq3

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

@hadi_hoss @RealAAAI One issue is that conferences are "memoryless", in the sense that organizers do not "publicly shame" bad actors (neither authors nor PC members). If PC members knew that bad behavior may affect their future ability to submit papers at certain venues I'm sure they'll improve!

[Eugene Bagdasarian @ebagdasa]

I am looking for PhD students to work together on privacy and security problems in “AI Systems”. We will focus on language models, agents, ML services, and study where they fail and how to make them work better. Apply by December 15. #phdlife #manningcics

[Yannai A. Gonczarowski @YannaiGonch]

Following up on previous years' compilations of Market Design job-market profiles, @AssafRomm @RanShorrer and I are compiling an edition for this job market.

Last year, in early October, we sent out a call to job market candidates to submit their profiles to our annual list, which helps candidates who focus on market design to gain exposure to potential employers. Due to the horrible circumstances, we are late this year. Still, below is a link to submit your profiles. All information submitted will be made public in SIGecom Exchanges and on social media. We dedicate this effort in memory of all the innocents who were murdered or otherwise harmed in the terrorist attack on Israel on Oct 7, and all the innocents who were killed or otherwise harmed in its ongoing aftermath, and with the hope that all those abducted—children, women, and men—will be back home by the end of this job market season.

Add yourself by Nov 19: https://t.co/vrsFgE2TMX
Last year's edition: https://t.co/PSFlxAnIJM
Please circulate! #EconTwitter #EconJMC

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

UCU academics be like

[Union of Jewish Students @UJS_UK]

BREAKING: @ucl_ucu academics voted for “Intifada until victory” and a “mass uprising” against Israeli civilians. This is a horrific incitement to violence and terror.

We have written to UCL’s Provost to express disgust at the motion & call for urgent action in the wake of this.

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

Between all this plus managing my work and family, I simply do not have the mental cycles to also engage in a discussion of socio-political events in the Middle East with people for whom this is simply a theoretical exercise. 4/

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

To my colleagues who feel the compelling urge to show their support for Palestine at this time - thank you, your virtue has been signaled. At any other time I would’ve be happy to engage in an invigorating discussion. I’ll buy you a coffee. /1

[Yair Zick @YairZick]

Many of your colleagues are dealing with loved ones who are dead/missing/in harm's way. We are compulsively reading news reports, checking in with family/friends to see that they're still alive (or grieving those who aren't), and dealing with our own feelings 3/