My mastodon account: @vardi@fediscience.org

Professor, Rice U., Houston
Joined April 2008
Touched by Royalty – very unusual experience yesterday evening: shaking hands and exchanging words with Princess Anne, HRH the Princess Royal, and receiving an honorary scroll from her during a formal ceremony for induction into the @RAEngNews, held in the Draper’s House in London as part of a cocktail hour and black tie dinner event. Shifting venues today to the Prince Philip House, the agenda involved signing the registry, accepting the obligation and then listening to short talks by new Fellows and to presentations by leadership on the structure of the Fellowship, finally concluding with a history walk along the Carlton House terrace. Various pictures attached (professional photographs to be available at a later time). Honored to be inducted along with 75 others this year -- 7 of the 10 international fellows are from the US, including my friend @vardi, a University Professor at @RiceUniversity. In my case, this recognition is for research conducted over the last quarter century. As such, tremendous credit goes to all of the former members of our group (183 postdoctoral fellows and 52 PhD students, along with many dozens of MS students and several hundred undergraduates) and to our many collaborators, past and present -- most notably Dr. @aTonyBanks and Professor Yonggang Huang, senior co-authors on more than 75 and 400 papers, respectively! Thanks to all for a strong run up to this point – reflecting briefly, but turning quickly to next challenges,
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We are proud to recognize Suzanne Plummer ’89 with the Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award as part of our Alumni Awards Celebration. Learn more about how she has transformed modern computing and fostered a network of support for women in engineering: ow.ly/q5qb50ZZpWm
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
NEW: Sky News has announced that a report will be released this week that uncovers the vast antisemitism problem in UK schools. Will people finally listen to Jews when they see the extent of the problem portrayed in an independent study? I hope so.
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
Dear reader, If you are as busy as the rest of us, and can't find the time to read "Coexistence" cover to cover, don't miss two key chapters: 1. Timeline of Key Moments in the History of the Jewish People: ucla.in/3SzYndp 2. Glossary of Key Terms: ucla.in/4c80SuvAnd Then go back to read selected chapters of: bayes.cs.ucla.edu/COEXISTENC…
Replying to @LargeWlarge63
I mean the historical symbolic meaning of Israel which is common to both religious and secular Jews, namely, the restoration of Jewish normalcy. See Glossary of Key Terms: ucla.in/4c80Suv And Timeline of Key Moments in the History of the Jewish People ucla.in/3SzYndp
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
New video by Royal Academy of Engineering: How do we build the energy infrastructure of tomorrow, today? youtube.com/watch?v=RSOfriy9…
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
My lecture at Pepperdine University ended with a short interview, and a solution for "God, Man and AI". Sharing: drive.google.com/file/d/1vYg…
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
BREAKING: UN torture expert denounces colleagues Francesca Albanese and Reem Alsalem for denying October 7 atrocities and ignoring Hamas torture of Israeli hostages: “My colleagues said nothing. I felt ashamed. Their one-sided, vitriolic reports added to families’ anguish.”
Dr. Alice Jill Edwards: “The UN had done so little to help them... I felt ashamed. I am still outraged that UN special rapporteurs Francesca Albanese and Reem Alsalem never formally documented these horrors. Instead, both have continued to issue a stream of what I regard as one-sided and vitriolic reports, and hard-to-justify excuses for their lack of attention. That, families and returned hostages have told me, only added to their anguish.”
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
Terence Tao: The race to AGI is becoming a bit toxic and a bit scary. “We’re not only sacrificing understanding, we’re also sacrificing safety.” “When these tools are just chatbots, it can be charming if they make mistakes. But now we’re putting them in charge of reward systems.” “A lot of junior research projects just got wiped out overnight.” “One or two papers even had errors and were retracted.” “We don’t have a clear picture of what’s going on, and no one from OpenAI is helping us.”
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The man entrusted with Britain's national security is married to a journalist who publicly questioned the testimony of Israeli rape victims, sneered at solidarity with Israel the day after October 7, and told James O'Brien he could "do better" than calling Hamas a "murderous death cult". You'd have expected Sarah Helm to keep her head down while questions swirl about her husband, Jonathan Powell. You'd have expected wrong. On Monday, she waded in to defend the Palestine poppy, days after the Telegraph revealed that its creator, an NHS doctor, had circulated an image comparing Israel to a cancer. Helm is entitled to her opinions, however grotesque. But when your husband is privy to the nation's deepest secrets, they cease to be a family matter. Powell owes the public answers. The Cabinet Office owes us an explanation of what safeguards exist. And he should step down. My latest column (link in first reply) 👇
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
"Our study reveals an interesting aging effect that complicates the prevailing narrative of declining innovation over a scientific career." More persistent disruptive (PD) work by senior scientists than younger counterparts pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
"Hamas may have planned and perpetrated the attack, but American academics helped construct the ideology through which many Americans, and others across the Western world, would come to understand it." sjhyde.substack.com/p/americ…
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
More than half of the men surveyed in a new Harvard study claimed to recognize AI leaders who were, in fact, totally fictional. buff.ly/XwYJ2TD
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
in the united states, opposition to ai isn’t fear of technology. americans haven’t suddenly become a nation of luddites. it’s a well founded belief that those with power are not going to use ai in ways that benefit the average american. this is not a comms problem. it’s a trust problem.
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"We recognize the power of new technologies for mathematical reasoning and appreciate what they can contribute to the subject we know and love. We are generally optimistic about the role AI can play, but we are deeply concerned by some recent calls to formalize everything as quickly as possible. If done well, a large-scale, coordinated formalization effort could enormously expand mathematical exploration and discovery. Done poorly, it will be, at best, a waste of resources; more likely, it will do lasting damage." A guest post on xenaproject by Jeremy Avigad, Kevin Buzzard, Johan Commelin, Rémy Degenne, Kim Morrison, Oliver Nash and Adam Topaz xenaproject.wordpress.com/20…
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Moshe Vardi retweeted
Show me a candidate’s supporters and I’ll tell you who he is. Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed fundraised with a school principal forced out for defending “Intifada” T-shirts and a Gaza flotilla activist who calls Thanksgiving a “national day of mourning.” This is the company he keeps. He might be hiding the extent of his radicalism but those helping him raise campaign money are not ashamed of their fringe world view. freebeacon.substack.com/p/ab…
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