Derek Willis

Why they matter

Directory member with public evidence across Culture, work & education.

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7d ago
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I teach data journalism at the University of Maryland, run OpenElections. Fan of WBB & test cricket. Posting obscure things about campaign finance, Congress & elections. https://github.com/dwillis https://thescoop.org https://buttondown.com/dwillis

Articles & links

↻ Derek Willis reposted
@matthodges.bsky.social

I want more people to know about the chatbot models that all the doctors are using: Osler, Sackett, and Snow. www.openevidence.com/blog/model-f...

openevidence.com View on Bluesky →

Really excited that my friends at @biglocalnews.bsky.social have released DataTalk, a federal campaign finance agent that turns your questions about FEC data into data-backed answers. I helped a bit with this, and am very interested in feedback (as are the BLN folks). datatalk…

DataTalk datatalk.biglocalnews.org
View on Bluesky · ♥ 16 ↻ 7 ↩ 1 · 83d ago

Recent commentary

idk, I'm starting to worry about the LLM that's producing fundraising emails for Mike Rogers' Senate campaign:

View on Bluesky · ♥ 16 ↻ 7 ↩ 4 · 52d ago

"Ok, our new AI writing app is almost ready to go. Sure, we spelled 'Hemingway' wrong, but at least we captured some of the bleakness in the slogan, right?"

View on Bluesky · ♥ 19 ↻ 2 ↩ 2 · 5d ago

Does Facebook have a problem with AI-generated slop pages? Here's a post about UF football coach Jon Sumrall "clashing" with Nigel Farage about immigration to help you decide!

View on Bluesky · ♥ 10 ↻ 2 ↩ 2 · 133d ago

Been trying out some new open-weight OCR-focused LLMs and found a 4b param model that nails pages like this, including the "vertical" headers. OCR isn't totally solved, but we're getting closer to a scenario where you can get 2 of these 3, one of which is always accurate: cheap fast accurate

View on Bluesky · ♥ 8 ↻ 0 ↩ 2 · 68d ago

Detecting AI-written materials is hard, they say. Tough to be sure, they say. RNC: A person would definitely write a subject line of "Question 1 of 14"

View on Bluesky · ♥ 9 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 23d ago

As I sign up for more political fundraising emails, I'm gonna start surfacing the most AI-generated candidate website designs I'm finding. Here's one for Virginia McIntyre, a NY congressional hopeful:

View on Bluesky · ♥ 3 ↻ 1 ↩ 1 · 100d ago

I know I can always spot veterans because they wear this jacket(?) with "U.S. VETERAN" across the back as this clearly AI-generated image from a VA newsletter shows.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 2 ↻ 1 ↩ 1 · 27d ago

Honestly, might be starting to prefer AI writing over this MadLib by, well, mad libs.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 5 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 89d ago

I don't often use papal encyclicals in teaching my class on artificial intelligence, but when I do, I use this pope's encyclicals.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 4 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 128d ago

What you definitely want to see when you're working on a process that uses AI agents: "The shell can write outside its sandbox."

View on Bluesky · ♥ 2 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 3d ago

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