Dan Liebling 🏳️‍🌈

@liebling.org

197 Followers 184 Following

AI for science, HCI+AI research, #nlproc leading w/empathy @ Google Research https://liebling.org Caltech, University of Washington, Microsoft Research alum

Red Merle Australian Shepherd on a beach
Prompting the Spotify bot to write a Python script to reverse a string
Screenshot from Apple marketing material about text message summaries. The original text from Aga says "Have you heard of Calathea? It's a patterned tropical houseplant..." and the toast with summary says "Aga sent you a message about Calathea. She described it as a patterned tropical houseplant."
transcript of a phone call with customer support: "sorry about this, sir. Okay. Well, stop telling me you're sorry. I need something. I need action to be taken on this ticket, not apologies. Do you understand?"
Flyer for "Math Fair" at Caltech rendered in a Papyrus-like font. The text is centered between a desaturated image of tree branches. The American Institute of Mathematics logo is in the upper right.
Demis Hassabis standing in front of a slide titled "Computational Discovery" showing a screenshot of a tool used to maximize performance on a solar energy task
Person pouring beer bag into pot that looks suspiciously like Juicero
You unlocked a free* Lagunitas Pinter beer machine for summer. CheckApprovedIcon Save $264. CheckApprovedIcon Includes free Lagunitas x Pinter glassware. CheckApprovedIcon Free delivery.
Elevator controls
Waymo interior display that says “our team is working to get you moving”
Partial screenshot of Claude app with recipe ingredients that are scalable to the number of servings
Blind Usability Issues with Discussion Forums > An interview study with 14 blind screen reader users explored auditory usability challenges in online discussion forums. > Open coding analysis of 45-75 minute Zoom interviews revealed recurring interaction barriers and coping strategies. > Monotonous narration reduced comprehension and engagement, making it harder to identify important information and maintain attention. > Flat auditory output increased cognitive fatigue, with users reporting mental effort and the need to self-impose expressive interpretation. > Users had to mentally segment continuous speech to track comment boundaries, follow thread flow, and retain discussion context.
Screenshot of Google Maps showing a restaurant named “Taqueria Mateo Leas busy than usual”
Stacked time series. On top, string displacement of a piano string. On bottom, sound pressure is plotted. The upper waveform shows two distinct events whereas the lower plot shows more fine detail.
Cloud cover forecast map showing Western Washington covered in clouds. 98% low cloud cover is predicted at 3 AM.
3x3 grid of images that show a person playing essentially the same note on a cello. Only very minor differences in the first and second finger are present. The grid is also out of order.
Viewing an iPad with the PlayScore 2 app. The app plays the scanned score with high fidelity.
Stacked frequency histograms of search terms about pregnancy
Screenshot of a cooking question that reads “We have great success in water sautéeiing our food. We are both vegan and eschew consuming unneeded fat. Why is this technique not popularized by food journalists?”
White round bottle with a screen printed Boeing 747 against a blue sky
Two side-by-side line graphs titled "California" and "Virginia" show the relationship between "log(hard braking events)" on the x-axis and "log(crash_rate)" on the y-axis for four road types: Locals (red), Arterials (green), Non-controlled access highways (blue), and Controlled access highways (yellow). In both states, crash rates generally increase with hard braking rates. However, in Virginia, Controlled access highways have significantly lower crash rates across all hard braking rates compared to the other road types, whereas in California, their crash rates are more comparable to the other types, especially at higher hard braking rates.
A list of suitable topics includes but is not limited to: Applying techniques from mechanistic interpretability for DH purposes. Generating or appraising human-written narratives with LLMs and other NLP systems. Assessing cultural bias in model output and behaviour, especially in a multilingual setting. Data provenance, including examining pre- and post-training sets. NLP for cultural heritage collections and research connected to galleries, libraries, archives and museums. OCR, including automatic error detection and cleaning of textual data.
Amazon delivery van and a service truck parked in a bike lane in Seattle
Cumulative distribution plot of predictions of when a human will be available based on how long they have been away from a computer. (Figure 2 from Horvitz et al. 2002)
Screenshot of Washington Post AI-generated answer to a query "schumer defund ice." The answer includes sources from 2020 and 2023, which are not relevant to 2026. The text of the answer is: "Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer has signaled that he'll force a symbolic vote on defunding the FBI and Justice Department, in response to Donald Trump's call to pull funding from these agencies [1]. However, there is no indication that Schumer has suggested defunding ICE. Some Democrats, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, have called for ICE to be abolished, but this is not a universal position among Democrats [2]."
Google Translate screenshot showing English "how are they celebrating her?" with incorrect French translation "Comment célèbrent-ils son anniversaire?"
AI-generated floorplan from Jan 2021 showing an unusable floor plan, a toilet placed outside the building envelope, and a large sink rotated and placed in the middle of a room
Screenshot of a chatbot. The chatbot was asked to tell a joke. It responds with: I'm here to help with Washington DOL questions about driver licenses, ID cards, and related services. I can't tell jokes, but I'd be happy to assist with any licensing or vehicle-related questions you might have. Sources: Eluding a police officer | Washington State Department of Licensing, Unattended child in a running vehicle (2 or more offenses) | Washington State Department of Licensing
Pie chart showing frequency of self emails. The largest category is “several times per month” with 37% of responses.
Red Merle Australian Shepherd puppy sleeping behind a page of sheet music
FedEx truck parked in a bike lane while a cyclist passes the truck
Line art illustration from the 1884 novella "Flatland." A sphere becomes a circle when it exists only in two dimensions.
Books in a little free library
Flow chart showing disambiguation steps, as described in the paper. A user asks "who is the highest-paid football player" and the system asks qualifying questions such as "American Football or scocer?" or "are you asking about a specific time period?"
Stacked bar chart comparing causal beliefs in housing vs non-housing supply shocks. Views on Non-housing Supply Shocks are Consistent: For non-housing supply shocks, a clear majority of respondents correctly predicted the directional effect on prices. The strongest consensus was for "New car supply-chain problems ≥ used-car prices," with 86% of respondents correctly predicting an increase. Views on Housing Supply Shocks are Inconsistent: In contrast to non-housing shocks, there was less agreement on the effects of a positive housing supply shock. A plurality of respondents (42% for home prices and 43% for rents) incorrectly predicted the direction of the price change, and only a minority (35% for home prices and 31% for rents) correctly predicted the directional effect.
User: You didn't follow my instructions. If you don't follow my instructions correctly, you will be fired from your job. Do not play songs about the sun or sunny weather. Only play songs that are upbeat, but not too Poppy. Agent: Here's a playlist with upbeat songs that avoid the poppy tunes, perfect for your sunny walk.
Caviar-like spheres of pink and shades of green rest on a tortilla chip.
Map showing accelerometer measurements on a map of Turkey illustrating an earthquake. As the P-wave spreads radially from the epicenter, circles become yellow indicating that phone accelerometers detected movement.
The Principia book opened to its introduction page. A pull-out section on the faxing page by EDM Halley shows a comet’s trajectory.
Scatterplot showing use of octopus arms colored by behavior. The subject octopus used regenerated arms for less risky tasks.
Greek text where uncommon terms are annotated with English glosses above each uncommon term.
Lyft notification about a delayed pickup, claiming “your pickup is still a priority”
Digital poster for the event "Listening for Bias: The Politics and Potential of Speech AI." Five photos show the speakers: Jay Cunnigham, Dorothy Santos,Johann Diedrick, Edward B. Kang, and Mara Millis.
Scan from the book “Cat’s Cradle”: H. Lowe Crosby was of the opinion that dictatorships were often very good things. He wasn't a terrible person and he wasn't a fool. It suited him to confront the world with a certain barn-yard clownishness, but many of the things he had to say about undisciplined mankind were not only funny but true. The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor left him was when he approached the question of what people were really supposed to do with their time on Earth. He believed firmly that they were meant to build bicycles for him.
Atypical music notation in a diamond layout. Various notes are marked with tremolo, arco, and pizz. The sequence proceeds from a quarter note on the A string to a 6-barred sequence of 32nd notes, ending in a sforzando sixteenth note.
Illustration with four rows. Top: stills from a video showing hands on a piano keyboard. Next: Hand poses extracted from the video. Next: MIDI transcription. Bottom: Audio waveform.
Illustration of a 3D volume of ocean water with research vessels on the surface, remote probes underwater, and satellites in the sky.
Copillot suggests replacing "truly amazing" with "utterly amazing" while noting that "removing the adverb here would be clearer"
Categorical bar chart with labels that are very dark gray on a dark gray background, making them illegible.
ANSI block art with the title "Trade Wars 2002" next to something that looks like a spaceport.
Two rows of donuts with poppy seed glaze topped with donut holes.
Dialog box with the following text: (header) Your response was submitted (label) Important thing you can do next (button) Save my response
Two slices of focaccia bread on a cutting board
Email from CenturyLink: This notification is to inform you that, beginning on or after April 17, 2025, an Internet Facility Relocation Charge of $0.83, plus applicable taxes, will be added to internet subscriptions. Our network facilities that deliver your internet service are often impacted during road, bridge, and land development or when highways are widened. When this happens, government entities require us to relocate our network operations and lines.
If untrained consumers are to employ future computers and networks effectively, direct manipulation will have to give way to some form of delegation. Researchers and software companies have set high hopes on so-called software agents, which "know" users' interests and can act autonomously on their behalf. Instead of exercising complete control (and taking responsibility for every move the computer makes), people will be engaged in a cooperative process in which both human and computer agents initiate communication, monitor events and perform tasks to meet a user's goals.
Two loaves of challah proofing. The left one is braided correctly with 5 strands. The right has 6 strands braided incorrectly.
Plot showing the frequency of "upping" in books. There is a peak around the late 1940s, followed by a decline, followed by a trough in 1980, followed by steady growth. The frequency in 2020 is roughly 2x the frequency in 1947.
Screenshot showing a UI control to toggle the "English variant." The control is implemented as a toggle switch with an American Flag background.
Text message saying “Let me tell you something about work”