Shows / Data Skeptic
Data Skeptic
The Data Skeptic Podcast features interviews and discussion of topics related to data science, statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the like, all from the perspective of applying critical thinking and the scientific method to evaluate the veracity of claims and efficacy of approaches.
Episodes
Data SkepticPrompt Refusal
The creators of large language models impose restrictions on some of the types of requests one might make of them. LLMs commonly refuse to give advice on…
Data SkepticA Long Way Till AGI
Our guest today is Maciej Świechowski. Maciej is affiliated with QED Software and QED Games. He has a Ph.D. in Systems Research from the Polish Academy of…
Data SkepticBrain Inspired AI
Today on the show, we are joined by Lin Zhao and Lu Zhang. Lin is a Senior Research Scientist at United Imaging Intelligence, while Lu is a Ph.D. candidate at…
Data SkepticComputable AGI
On today's show, we are joined by Michael Timothy Bennett, a Ph.D. student at the Australian National University. Michael's research is centered around…
Data SkepticAGI Can Be Safe
We are joined by Koen Holtman, an independent AI researcher focusing on AI safety. Koen is the Founder of Holtman Systems Research, a research company based in…
Data SkepticAI Fails on Theory of Mind Tasks
An assistant professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Tomer Ullman, joins us. Tomer discussed the theory of mind and whether machines can indeed pass it…
Data SkepticAI for Mathematics Education
The application of LLMs cuts across various industries. Today, we are joined by Steven Van Vaerenbergh, who discussed the application of AI in mathematics…
Data SkepticEvaluating Jokes with LLMs
Fabricio Goes, a Lecturer in Creative Computing at the University of Leicester, joins us today. Fabricio discussed what creativity entails and how to evaluate…
Data SkepticWhy Machines Will Never Rule the World
Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe, authors of the book "Why Machines will never Rule the World," join us today. They discussed the limitations of AI systems in…
Data SkepticA Psychopathological Approach to Safety in AGI
While the possibilities with AGI emergence seem great, it also calls for safety concerns. On the show, Vahid Behzadan, an Assistant Professor of Computer…
Data SkepticThe NLP Community Metasurvey
Julian Michael, a postdoc at the Center for Data Science, New York University, joins us today. Julian's conversation with Kyle was centered on the NLP…
Data SkepticSkeptical Survey Interpretation
Kyle shares his own perspectives on challenges getting insight from surveys. The discussion ranges from commentary on the market research industry to specific…
Data SkepticThe Gallup Poll
Jeff Jones, a Senior Editor at Gallup, joins us today. His conversation with Kyle spanned a range of topics on Gallup's poll creation process. He discussed how…
Data SkepticInclusive Study Group Formation at Scale
Gireeja Ranade, a University of California at Berkeley professor, speaks with us today. She presented her study on implementing inclusive study groups at scale…
Data SkepticThe PhilPapers Survey
Today, we are joined by David Bourget. David is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Western University in London, Ontario. David is also the co-director of…
Data SkepticNon-Response Bias
Today's show focused on an essential part of surveys — missing values. This is typically caused by a low response rate or non-response from respondents. Yajuan…
Data SkepticMeasuring Trust in Robots with Likert Scales
We are joined by two guests today, Mariah, a Ph.D. student in the CORE Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, and Matthew Gombolay, the Director of the CORE Robotics…
Data SkepticCAREER Prediction
Ever wondered what your next career would be? Today, Keyon Vafa, a computer science Ph.D. student at Columbia University, joins us to discuss his latest…
Data SkepticThe Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Noura Insolera, a Research Investigator with the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), joins us to share how PSID conducts longitudinal household surveys. She…
Data SkepticSurvey Design Working Session
Susan Gerbic joins Kyle to review some of the surveys Data Skeptic has launch, draft a new survey about podcast listening habits, and then review the results…
Data SkepticBot Detection and Dyadic Surveys
The use of social bots to fill out online surveys is becoming prevalent. Today, we speak with Sara Bybee, a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of…
Data SkepticReproducible ESP Testing
Our guest today is Zoltán Kekecs, a Ph.D. holder in Behavioural Science. Zoltán highlights the problem of low replicability in journal papers and illustrates…
Data SkepticA Survey of Data Science Methodologies
On the show, Iñigo Martinez, a Ph.D. student at the University of Navarra shares his survey results which investigated how data practitioners perform data…
Data SkepticOpinion Dynamics Models
On the show today, Dino Carpentras, a post-doctoral researcher at the Computational Social Science group at ETH Zürich joins us to discuss how opinion dynamics…
Data SkepticCasual Affective Triggers
Crafting survey questions is one thing but getting your audience to fill it is yet another. On the show today, we speak with Alexander Nolte, an Associate…
Data SkepticConversational Surveys
Traditional surveys have straight-jacket questions to be answered, thus restricting the information that can be gotten. Today, Ziang Xiao, a Postdoc Researcher…
Data SkepticDo Results Generalize for Privacy and Security Surveys
Today, Jenny Tang, a Ph.D. student of societal computing at Carnegie Mellon University discusses her work on the generalization of privacy and security surveys…
Data Skeptic4 out of 5 Data Scientists Agree
This episode kicks off the new season of the show, Data Skeptic: Surveys. Linhda rejoins the show for a conversation with Kyle about her experience taking…
Data SkepticCrowdfunded Board Games
It may be intuitive to think crowdfunding a project drives its innovation and novelty, but there are no empirical studies that prove this. On the show…
Data SkepticRussian Election Interference Effectiveness
There were reports of Russia's interference in the 2016 US elections. In today's episode, Koustuv Saha, a researcher at Microsoft Research walks us through the…
Data SkepticPlacement Laundering Fraud
There is an unsung kind of ad fraud brewing in the ad tech space — placement laundering fraud. On the show, Jeff Kline discusses what placement laundering…
Data SkepticData Clean Rooms
Bosko Milekic, the Co-founder of Optable, a data collaboration platform for the media and advertising industry, joins us today. Bosko talked about the clean…
Data SkepticDark Patterns in Site Design
Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy is a Research Associate at the University of Luxembourg. She joins us to discuss her study that investigated dark patterns in web…
Data SkepticInternet Advertising Bureau Media Lab
We are joined by Anthony Katsur, the CEO of IAB Tech Lab. Anthony discusses standards within the ad tech industry. He explained how IAB Tech Lab set and…
Data SkepticYour Mouse Reveals Your Gender and Age
When we navigate a webpage, it is fairly easy for our mouse movement to be tracked and collected. Today, Luis Leiva, a Professor of Computer Science discusses…
Data SkepticMeasuring Web Search Behavior
On the show, Aleksandra Urman and Mykola Makhortykh join us to discuss their work on the comparative analysis of web search behavior using web tracking data…
Data SkepticStrategyQA and Big Bench
Did Aristotle Use a Laptop? That's a question from the StrategyQA benchmark which highlights the stretch goals for current artificial intelligence systems…
Data SkepticAd Blockers Effect on News Consumption
While at first glance, the use of ad blockers drops the revenue of news publishers, this may not be completely true. On the show today, Shunyao Yan, an…
Data SkepticYour Consent is Worth 75 Euros a Year
People who do not want their data tracked and shared online can pay a token for a cookie paywall. But are the websites keeping to their side of the bargain?…
Data SkepticAutomated Email Generation for Targeted Attacks
The advancement of generative language models has been a force for good, but also for evil. On the show, Avisha Das, a post-doctoral scholar at the University…
Data SkepticTribal Marketing
Peter Gloor, a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, takes us on a new world of tribe classification. He extensively discussed the…
Data SkepticDebiasing GPT-3 Job Ads
We hear about the impeccable achievements of GPT-3 models, but such large generative models come with their bias. On the show today, Conrad Borchers, a Ph.D…
Data SkepticML Ops in Production
Moses Guttman from Clear ML joins us to share insights about how organizations leveraging machine learning keep their programs on track. While many parallels…
Data SkepticAd Network Tomography
Data sharing in the ad tech space has largely been a black box system. While it is obvious the data is being collected, the data sharing process is obscure to…
Data SkepticFirst Party Tracking Cookies
When you accept cookies on a website, you cannot tell whether the cookies are used for tracking your personal data or not. Shaoor Munir's machine learning…
Data SkepticThe Harms of Targeted Weight Loss Ads
Liza Gak, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, joins us to discuss her research on harmful weight loss advertising. She discussed how weight loss ads are not…
Data SkepticPodcast Advertising
Growing your podcast to the point of monetization is not a walk in the park. Today, Rob Walch, the VP of Podcast Relations at Libsyn talks about podcast…
Data SkepticFairness in e-Commerce Search
When we search for products in e-commerce stores, we do not care what goes on under the hood to generate the results. However, there may be an intentional…
Data SkepticFraudulent Amazon Reviewers
Chances are that you have bought a product online majorly because of the reviews you saw. Unfortunately, not all reviews are genuine. Today, Rajvardhan Oak…
Data SkepticAd Targeting in Amazon Smart Speakers
While we give attention to textual data on the web, many do not know the unique power of echo interactions with smart devices for ad targeting. Today, our…
Data SkepticAdwords with Unknown Budgets
Rajan Udwani, an Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkeley joins us to discuss his work on AdWords with unknown budgets. He discussed the…
Data SkepticML Ops Best Practices
Today, we are joined by Piotr Niedźwiedź, Founder and CEO of Neptune.ai. Piotr discusses common MLOps activities by data science teams and how they can take…
Data SkepticAffiliate Marketing Rabbithole
Affiliate marketing creates an opportunity for marketers to gain a commission by promoting a product or service. Cookies are typically used for tracking and…
Data SkepticMonetization of Youtube Conspiracy Theorists
Cameron Ballard joins us today to discuss his work around YouTube conspiracy theories. He revealed interesting observations about conspiracy theories on…
Data SkepticUser Perceptions of Problematic Ads
Eric Zeng joins us to discuss his study around understanding bad ads and efforts that can be taken to limit bad ads online. He discussed how he and his co…
Data SkepticPolitical Digital Advertising Analysis
NaLette Brodnax, a political scientist and an Assistant Professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University joins us to discuss her work…
Data SkepticPrivacy Preference Signals
Have you ever wondered what goes on under the hood when you accept a website's cookies? Today, Maximilian Hils, a PhD student in Computer Science, at the…