Derek Willis

Why they matter

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

AI signals
2
past 30d
Sources
2
distinct domains
Discussions
7
past 30d
Latest signal
13d ago
View every signal from Derek Willis →
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

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 · 63d 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 · 32d 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 · 113d 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 · 48d 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 · 3d 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 · 80d 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 · 6d ago

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

View on Bluesky · ♥ 5 ↻ 0 ↩ 0 · 69d 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 · 108d ago

In Derek Willis's orbit

Center = Derek Willis. Left = members they follow (green edges). Right = members who follow them (blue edges). Top = mutual follows (orange edges, slightly larger). Drag any node to reposition; click to open that profile.

Are you Derek Willis? Show it.

Add the Who’s Who of AI badge to your site or bio. It links back to this profile.

Listed in AI Weekly's Who's Who of AI

Markdown: [![Listed in AI Weekly's Who's Who of AI](https://aiweekly.co/modules/custom/aiweekly_whoswho/images/whoswho-badge.svg)](https://aiweekly.co/whos-who/person/dwillis-bsky-social)