In case you didn’t notice, ICFP dropped Anduril as a sponsor https://icfp26.sigplan.org
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William J. Bowman🇨🇦
@wilbowma@types.pl
mastodon 4.8.0-alpha.2+glitchParen-wielding facebook-theorist. Sith Lord of Compilers. Beloved fucking menace. Silky smooth, level headed, and powerful. Gives off catgirl lesbian energy
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Joined October 27, 2020
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Finally setup a browser redirect from dl.acm.org to https://al.radbox.org and it is so fucking embarrassing for the ACM how much better this experience is
Wrote a new blog post: "Against Vibes: When is a Generative Model Useful" https://www.williamjbowman.com/blog/2026/03/05/against-vibes-when-is-a-generative-model-useful/
I think if I spend any more time on this, I'll risk doing more harm than good: new blog post on "AI" and ethics.
If you are an author whose work is on the ACM DL, I'd like to strongly encourage you to check the accuracy of the AI Summary of your paper, and send feedback to the ACM on this feature and the inaccuracies in your summary. See more here: https://dl.acm.org/generative-ai/summarizations
Please boost, repost, and otherwise steal this post to reach other authors.
In long:
The ACM has begun rolling out "Digital Library Premium" features. A very notable one is AI Summaries of papers, which displace the author written abstract with an AI generated summary of the paper on the front page for the paper.
Of the several I've checked, they all contain subtle inaccuracies that would VERY EASILY mislead even experts familiar with the work.
This is a HUGE DISSERVICE TO SCIENCE. These summaries might appear to make science more accessible, but subtle errors introduced into the authors original text is the very opposite of making science more accessible. This will mislead rather than educate.
The ACM has a feature to send feedback on these summaries. Open your DOI, and look for the "Feedback" button on the right of the page, or the "Send Feedback" link in the footer. (You might need to disable ad-blockers, as this services uses mopinion.com)
The ACM is requesting this feedback, and it's important to let them know that such "hallucinations" are not solvable:
These tools were designed in consultation with a diverse group of Digital Library stakeholders and will continue to evolve as Artificial Intelligence advances. We are continuously tuning our Foundational Model to optimize readability and we conduct regular audits for hallucinations and other errors. We are very interested in your thoughts and suggestions- please leave them by clicking the "Feedback" button on the far right of this page. If you find a problem with a specific AI-generated summary, please return to that summary and click the Feedback there.
More aggressively, you might email dl-team@hq.acm.org (also linked in the footer).
Update 1: It seems the ACM no longer displaces the abstract with these summaries, so I can hope this feedback has been helpful in affecting change.
Update 2: It seems these summaries have been generated on papers whose license may forbid it, such as CC-BY-ND. If you have a restrictive license on your paper, you may check whether it’s being followed and send further feedback if not.
Question about accessibility best practice in PL papers/PDFs: in the \Description of a figure, say a bunch of inference rules or a grammar definition, what do you write? Do you write a visual description of what the reader "sees"? Because, the text referencing the figure already describes the meaning. So it seems redundant to describe their meaning, which is sort of my instinct.
(reposting publicly feel free to boost)
The ACM made $6m profit and total assets grew $25m this year https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131921358
New blog post triggered after reading an autogenerated bibliography: https://www.williamjbowman.com/blog/2026/03/24/please-don-t-generate-your-bibliography/
A list of software pledging not to use "AI" https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html
accidental prompt injection while trying to look up a quote
Replying to
After additional heads-landing-on-engineering and applying this to the climate crisis, I've determined that after flipping enough coins I can actually increase the number of wind turbines that get built
It's been a long time and many rants ago so you may not remember my ranting about UBC installing some artificial turf fields that shed not-even-micro-plastics all over the place, so may I just say "wow who could have seen this coming" https://news.ubc.ca/2026/03/ubc-study-links-artificial-turf-fields-to-lethal-chemical-threat-for-salmon/
Replying to
@ionchy The argument that usage analytics support continued investment is a pretty convincing one against mere use
That uh "operating reserve" number is probably out of date. It's the same as their 2024 number, so it's probably much higher now. By between 10--12m would be my best guess, based on market trends and historical analysis. Their "operating reserve", i.e., giant hoarded surplus assets went up by $10m even in 2024, when they "only" made 300k in profit.
Replying to
better go prepare my lecture before I get myself into trouble
Well this is a great article about what science is and how it has been corrupted by metrics and what LLMs have to do with this.
But now I’m depressed again https://artificialbureaucracy.substack.com/p/context-widows
I for one welcome our new feathery overlords https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1s9pb2r/welcome_to_goosecouver_updated_honk_requirements/
Replying to
@mc They would lose their non-profit status in some countries, but in the US it’s does not appear to be illegal. I think I talk about that here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663958
Egg. E. E. Egg.
This code is an absolute mess but at least it's correct
@GeoffWozniak@masto.hackers.town I'd be shocked if anyone agree with me completely. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. I don't think my mind is totally settled on the matter, but.. it is more settled having written this