Language Science at University of California, Irvine Information theory and language
Joined March 2017
- Tweets842
- Following766
- Followers2.1K
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Richard Futrell retweeted
What's the relationship between memory constraints and the content/format of encoded information in sentence processing? Our recent work (w/ @rljfutrell and Brian Dillon) targeting this question has won the best paper award at #ACL2026
To check our paper: aclanthology.org/2026.acl-lo…
Cool computational linguistics postdoc position with Huteng Dai! careers.umich.edu/job_detail…
Richard Futrell retweeted
1/🧵 We are very excited to release our new paper! From Entropy to Epiplexity: Rethinking Information for Computationally Bounded Intelligence
arxiv.org/abs/2601.03220
with amazing team @ShikaiQiu @yidingjiang @Pavel_Izmailov @zicokolter @andrewgwils
Richard Futrell retweeted
I'm hiring! 2 x PhD positions to work at Uni Zurich with me on "Evolutionary Semantics" for an ERC-funded project. semantically curious MA grads from linguistics, cog psych, anthro encouraged to apply
evolvinglanguage.ch/studying…
Richard Futrell retweeted
🎓🤖🧠 Fully funded 4-year PhD in Computational Linguistics
@ucl - @UCLBrainScience - Division of Psychology & Language Sciences
New lab launching. Open topic. Strong computational focus.
🗓 Apply by 7 January
🇬🇧 UK home-rate students only (unfortunately)
Details ⬇️
Richard Futrell retweeted
We’re hiring PhD students and postdocs on LLM theory and interpretability!
Topics:
1️⃣ abilities & limitations of transformers and other architectures;
2️⃣ LLM interpretability;
3️⃣ foundations of LLM reasoning;
4️⃣ foundations of AI safety.
Richard Futrell retweeted
I’m recruiting PhD and Masters students at the University of British Columbia! Looking to work with students interested in LLM interpretability, and intersections with cog ling. The UBC NLP group is growing and awesome, and Vancouver is great. Come to 🇨🇦! isabelpapad.com/#joininglab
Do you want to understand how language models work, and how they can change language science? I'm recruiting PhD students at UBC Linguistics! The research will be fun, and Vancouver is lovely. So much cool NLP happening at UBC across both Ling and CS! linguistics.ubc.ca/graduate/…
Richard Futrell retweeted
[SRA 2.0] Glad to share that my new paper (with @rljfutrell) titled "Strategic resource allocation in memory encoding: An efficiency principle shaping language processing" is now on Journal of Memory and Language:
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Richard Futrell retweeted
Exciting news for the language science community... @UCIrvine has a new Center for Language, Intelligence, and Computation led by Richard Futrell @rljfutrell! Talks are open to all in person or via Zoom. Our inaugural talk on Oct 14, 11 am Pacific will feature Tom McCoy.
For information on the Center:
clic.socsci.uci.edu
For information on the talk:
socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/ev…
Richard Futrell retweeted
Social functions of language may drive faster change and faster diversification in some features.
Thanks to growing diversity in variationst sociolinguistics, I gathered studies of 63 languages from 28 families. Here I sketch some potential patterns
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.…
Richard Futrell retweeted
Are there conceptual directions in VLMs that transcend modality? Check out our COLM spotlight🔦 paper! We analyze how linear concepts interact with multimodality in VLM embeddings using SAEs
with @Huangyu58589918, @napoolar, @ShamKakade6 and Stephanie Gil
arxiv.org/abs/2504.11695
Richard Futrell retweeted
There's been lots of discussion on generative linguistics and generative AI. @EvaPortelance and I chime in here, suggesting that Neural Language Models (NLMs) reinforce key tenets of Chomsky’s approach in at least 3 fundamental ways, and that in turn, generative linguistics can
📢A Perspective from @EvaPortelance and @linguistMasoud discusses the compatibility between generative artificial intelligence and generative linguistics. nature.com/articles/s43588-0…
🔓rdcu.be/eGHhA
📣@kmahowald and I have a BBS target article with an optimistic take on LLMs + linguistics. Commentary proposals (just need a few hundred words) are OPEN until Oct 8. If we are too optimistic for you (or not optimistic enough!) or you have anything to say, go to the link below!
Link to submit commentary, including a link to the full paper! cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Richard Futrell retweeted
My department, UC Irvine Cognitive Sciences, is hiring at the Assistant Professor (tenure track) level. This is an incredible place to be--consider joining us! Applications due Nov 15th.
recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09896
Richard Futrell retweeted
Modeling sentence production as a staged generative process. Work by @JeremyYeaton, newly minted PhD and crew from the lab.
osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/w5…
Richard Futrell retweeted
Do LLMs store information in interpretable subspaces -- similar to variables in a program?
In our new paper, we decompose representation space into smaller, interpretable, non-basis-aligned subspaces with unsupervised learning.
Richard Futrell retweeted
Honored to have received a Senior Area Chair award at #ACL2025 for our Prosodic Typology paper. Huge shout out to the whole team: @CuiDing_CL, @tpimentelms, @a_stadt, @tamaregev!
Richard Futrell retweeted
Looking forward to attending #cogsci2025! I’m especially excited to meet students who will be applying to PhD programs in Computational Ling/CogSci in the coming cycle.
Please reach out if you want to meet up and chat! Email is best, but DM also works if you must
quick🧵:
ALT Placeholders for 3 students (number arbitrarily chosen) and me - to signify my eventual group!
Richard Futrell retweeted
new paper!
robust and general "soft" preferences are a hallmark of human language production. we show that these emerge from *any* policy minimizing an autoregressive memory-based cost function
w/ @rljfutrell & @jurafsky
