Erin Grant

Erin Grant

@eringrant.me

Assistant Professor @ualberta.bsky.social & Fellow @amiithinks.bsky.social studying cognition in mind & brain with neural nets, Bayes, and other tools (eringrant.github.io). elsewhere: sigmoid.social/@eringrant, twitter.com/ermgrant @ermgrant

5.6K followers1.5K following33 posts

Erin Grant reposted

Good morning #ICLR2026 ☀️ The Re-Align workshop kicks off in under an hour! A full day on what we can actually do with representational alignment, from brains to language models to agents. Schedule in the thread 👇

Erin Grant reposted

Join us! We are opening many postdoc positions both in London and in Gothenburg! London 🔗https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GTt33CasvWjxxazJw/hiring-principia-research-fellows 📅 deadline: March 26th Gothenburg 🔗 www.chalmers.se/en/about-cha... 📅 deadline: April 1st

chalmers.seVacanciesPhone +46-317721000Mail addressChalmers University of Technology412 96 GothenburgE-mail and more contact informationOrganisation number 556479-5598

📢 Job alert - Deep Learning Theory & AI Safety Applications open for a postdoc fellow (@saxelab.bsky.social lab) to study artificial deep networks using techniques from applied maths & stat physics. ⏰ Deadline: 26 Mar 2026 🤝 In collaboration with @stefsm.bsky.social ℹ️ www.ucl.ac.uk/life-science...

Erin Grant reposted

Excited to launch Principia, a nonprofit research organisation at the intersection of deep learning theory and AI safety. Our goal is to develop theory for modern machine learning systems that can help us understand complex network behaviors, including those critical for AI safety and alignment. 1

Erin Grant reposted

#CCN2026 Proceedings submissions are open and due in *two* weeks! Info about how to submit in the thread below👇 Come share your science and hang out in NYC in August. :)

CogCompNeuro@cogcompneuro.bsky.social

🚨 #CCN2026 Proceedings submissions are open! CCN 2026 again features an 8-page Proceedings track (alongside extended abstracts). Accepted papers will appear in CCN-Proceedings (CCN‑P) with DOIs on OpenReview.

@dataonbrainmind.bsky.social starting now in Room 10 with opening remarks from @crji.bsky.social and the first invited talk from @dyamins.bsky.social!

Data on the Brain & Mind @NeurIPS2025@dataonbrainmind.bsky.social

2️⃣ days until #NeurIPS2025 Data on the Brain & Mind workshop! 🧠💭🤖 Join us on Dec 7 for a full-day interactive session 8am-5pm PT. Authors, please remember to RSVP for our mentorship lunch 🥙 generously supported by @kavlifoundation.org and @simonsfoundation.org (@flatironinstitute.org)

Erin Grant reposted

Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

Erin Grant reposted

I'm on the academic job market! I design and analyze probabilistic machine-learning methods---motivated by real-world scientific constraints, and developed in collaboration with scientists in biology, chemistry, and physics. A few highlights of my research areas are:

Erin Grant reposted

Erin Grant reposted

I’m recruiting committee members for the Technical Program Committee at #CCN2026. Please apply if you want to help make submission, review & selection of contributed work (Extended Abstracts & Proceedings) more useful for everyone! 🌐 Helps to have: programming/communications/editorial experience.

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Erin Grant reposted

arguably the most important component of AI for neuroscience: data, and its usability

Data on the Brain & Mind @NeurIPS2025@dataonbrainmind.bsky.social

🚨 Excited to announce our #NeurIPS2025 Workshop: Data on the Brain & Mind 📣 Call for: Findings (4- or 8-page) + Tutorials tracks 🎙️ Speakers include @dyamins.bsky.social @lauragwilliams.bsky.social @cpehlevan.bsky.social 🌐 Learn more: data-brain-mind.github.io

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Our theory predicts that representational alignment is consistent with *efficient* implementation of similar function. Comparing representations is ill-posed in general, but becomes well-posed under minimum-norm constraints, which we link to computational advantages (noise robustness).

Main takeaway: Valid representational comparison relies on implicit assumptions (task-optimization *plus* efficient implementation). ⚠️ More work to do on making these assumptions explicit! 🧠 CCN poster (today): 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=w... 📄 ICML paper (July): icml.cc/virtual/2025/poster/44890

icml.ccICML Poster Not all solutions are created equal: An analytical dissociation of functional and representational similarity in deep linear neural networksICML 2025
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We demonstrate that representation analysis and comparison is ill-posed, giving both false negatives and false positives, unless we work with *task-specific representations*. These are interpretable *and* robust to noise (i.e., representational identifiability comes with computational advantages).

Function-representation dissociations and the representation-computation link persist in deep nonlinear networks! Using function-invariant reparametrisations (@bsimsek.bsky.social), we break representational identifiability but degrade generalization (a computational consequence).

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To analyse this dissociation in a tractable model of representation learning, we characterize *all* task solutions for two-layer linear networks. Within this solution manifold, we identify a solution hierarchy in terms of what implicit objectives are minimized (in addition to the task objective).

We parametrised this solution hierarchy to find differences in handling of task-irrelevant dimensions: Some solutions compress away (creating task-specific, interpretable representations), while others preserve arbitrary structure in null spaces (creating arbitrary, uninterpretable representations).

Deep networks have parameter symmetries, so we can walk through solution space, changing all weights and representations, while keeping output fixed. In the worst case, function and representation are *dissociated*. (Networks can have the same function with the same or different representation.)

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Cognitive science aims for more than mere prediction: We aim to build theories. Yet, evaluations in cognitive science tend to be narrow tests of a specific theory. How can we create benchmarks to make empirical validation more systematic, while preserving our goal of theory-driven cognitive science?

This GAC focuses on three debates/questions around benchmarks in cognitive science (the what, why, and how): (1) Should data or theory come first? (2) Should we focus on replication or exploration? (3) What incentives should we build up, if we choose to invest effort as a community?

Erin Grant reposted

Erin Grant reposted

That’s a wrap for Re²-Align 🤖 🧠👤 at #ICLR2025 🦁🥳— thanks for being part of it! We’re probably just getting started… see you all at Re³-Align🌷😉

Siddharth Suresh@siddsuresh97.bsky.social

✨ Come join us at the Second edition of the Re-Align workshop @iclr_conf ! 🚀🧠 The workshop explores the fascinating question of how artificial and biological systems align in their representations of the world. #ReAlign #ICLR2025

The afternoon session is continuing now! @iclr-conf.bsky.social

Siddharth Suresh@siddsuresh97.bsky.social

✨ Come join us at the Second edition of the Re-Align workshop @iclr_conf ! 🚀🧠 The workshop explores the fascinating question of how artificial and biological systems align in their representations of the world. #ReAlign #ICLR2025

Deadline extended till Feb. 5th!

Erin Grant@eringrant.me

Our representational alignment workshop returns to #ICLR2025! Submit your work on how ML/cogsci/neuro systems represent the world & what shapes these representations 💭🧠🤖 w/ @thisismyhat.bsky.social @dotadotadota.bsky.social, @sucholutsky.bsky.social @lukasmut.bsky.social @siddsuresh97.bsky.social

Last year, we funded 250 authors and other contributors to attend #ICLR2024 in Vienna as part of this program. If you or your organization want to directly support contributors this year, please get in touch! Hope to see you in Singapore at #ICLR2025!

ICLR Conference@iclr-conf.bsky.social

Financial Assistance applications are now open! If you face financial barriers to attending ICLR 2025, we encourage you to apply. The program offers prepay and reimbursement options. Applications are due March 2nd with decisions announced March 9th. iclr.cc/Conferences/...

Our representational alignment workshop returns to #ICLR2025! Submit your work on how ML/cogsci/neuro systems represent the world & what shapes these representations 💭🧠🤖 w/ @thisismyhat.bsky.social @dotadotadota.bsky.social, @sucholutsky.bsky.social @lukasmut.bsky.social @siddsuresh97.bsky.social

Dota Tianai Dong@dotadotadota.bsky.social

🚨Call for Papers🚨 The Re-Align Workshop is coming back to #ICLR2025 Our CfP is up! Come share your representational alignment work at our interdisciplinary workshop at @iclr-conf.bsky.social Deadline is 11:59 pm AOE on Feb 3rd representational-alignment.github.io

Erin Grant reposted

🚨 We just updated our perspective on representational alignment. The most recent version is both more crisp and more comprehensive. We try to find common language across research disciplines for aligning the representations from different info processing systems! arxiv.org/abs/2310.13018

arxiv.orgGetting aligned on representational alignmentBiological and artificial information processing systems form representations of the world that they can use to categorize, reason, plan, navigate, and make decisions. How can we measure the similarit...

Lightweight poster submissions for this stellar RS program end tomorrow (Sept. 17th)! I hear from Marta Kwiatkowska that Rich Sutton coined the title, so expect: bitter lessons alongside the longstanding debate between top-down vs. bottom-up approaches in CogSci :) royalsociety.org/science-even...

royalsociety.orgBeyond the symbols vs signals debate | Royal SocietyDiscussion meeting organised by Professor Marta Kwiatkowska FRS, Professor Peter Dayan FRS, Professor Tom Griffiths and Professor Doina Precup

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