katy ilonka gero

@[email protected]
163 Followers
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111 Posts

⌁ writer
⌁ poet
⌁ human-AI interaction researcher

Currently wrapping up my PhD at Columbia University. Investigating language models, writing assistance, computational creativity, and making sense of generative AI outputs.

Maker of digital & analog poetry, writer of essays, and lover of collage.

🌊✨ 💻✨ ✍✨ 🏳️‍🌈✨

Webhttp://www.katygero.com/
Show threadkaty ilonka geroJun 22, 2023
Also thanks to @michael for introducing me to Kush in the first place!
katy ilonka geroJun 22, 2023

Wow. I have a comment out in Nature Machine Intelligence about why people don't do data work (enough) and what we might do to encourage it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-023-00673-x.epdf

Many thanks to everyone at IBM who supported my somewhat circuitous internship: Kush Varshney for letting me explore and being the most encouraging mentor I've ever had. Payel Das for truly making the paper happen at every step. Prasanna Sattigiri, Inkit Padhi, and Pierre Dognin for their guidance and contributions along the way.

The incentive gap in data work in the era of large models | Nature Machine Intelligence

There are repeated calls in the AI community to prioritize data work — collecting, curating, analysing and otherwise considering the quality of data. But this is not practised as much as advocates would like, often because of a lack of institutional and cultural incentives. One way to encourage data work would be to reframe it as more technically rigorous, and thereby integrate it into more-valued lines of research such as model innovation.

Show threadkaty ilonka geroJun 8, 2023
@grvsmth Ah, I see. Yea, I think Guyan does a good job identifying the difficulty of getting representative samples in various queer communities and what this means for using collected data. Overall I found the book pretty nuanced and deeply investigated.
Show threadkaty ilonka geroJun 8, 2023
@grvsmth Mm, not sure exactly what you mean, but I think he has pretty good opinions about when data collection is good v. bad for queer communities.
katy ilonka geroJun 8, 2023

For pride non-fiction reading may I suggest:

Ace by Angela Chen

and

Queer Data by Kevin Guyan

...they have shockingly similar covers...

katy ilonka geroJun 5, 2023
When I get anxious about a research project that's not going very smoothly or quickly, I often try to remind myself that research is hard and if it all went super well then the problem probably wasn't challenging enough or wouldn't be considered research. But perhaps another framing is that research is a practice and I'm always learning and when something isn't going well it just means I'm learning a new thing.
katy ilonka geroJun 1, 2023

Discovering that it's possible I like boring books. There's a particular kind of not-that-exciting book that I love. It's like abstract art or a movie that's all texture and no plot. But I don't like all boring books; I'm picky.

I like the word boring because it suggests bad and it's fun to turn the idea that boring is bad on its head. But of course boring might not be the right word.

slow calm gradual narrow inefficient sustained slight spacious steady undirected rhythmic even restless

katy ilonka geroMay 30, 2023
rory greenMay 30, 2023
Issue 2 of Crawlspace, a journal of digital-born literature, is out now! Best viewed on desktop: https://crawlspace.cool
Show threadkaty ilonka geroMay 15, 2023
Overall I had a shockingly good time at CHI, which in the past has felt super overwhelming. Something clicked this year, and that was really cool to experience.
Show threadkaty ilonka geroMay 15, 2023
- Finally, I met a lot of really cool people with similar interests. Technology for creative writing seems to be exploding, or at least getting a lot more popular than it was five years ago. But I don't really have the time to take on new collaborations, so it's a mixed bag. I'm happy to finally find my people! But it's a bummer to not be able to engage with them all very deeply right now.