Within the Writer Highlight collection, TDS Editors chat with members of our group about their profession path in knowledge science and AI, their writing, and their sources of inspiration. At the moment, we’re thrilled to share our dialog with Stephanie Kirmer.
Stephanie is a Employees Machine Studying Engineer, with nearly 10 years of expertise in knowledge science and ML. Beforehand, she was a better schooling administrator and taught sociology and well being sciences to undergraduate college students. She writes a month-to-month put up on TDS about social themes and AI/ML, and offers talks across the nation on ML-related topics. She’ll be talking on methods for customizing LLM analysis at ODSC East in Boston in April 2026.
You studied sociology and the social and cultural foundations of schooling. How has your background formed your perspective on the social impacts of AI?
I feel my tutorial background has formed my perspective on every thing, together with AI. I realized to suppose sociologically via my tutorial profession, and meaning I take a look at occasions and phenomena and ask myself issues like “what are the social inequalities at play here?”, “how do different kinds of people experience this thing differently?”, and “how do institutions and groups of people influence how this thing is happening?”. These are the sorts of issues a sociologist desires to know, and we use the solutions to develop an understanding of what’s occurring round us. I’m constructing a speculation about what’s occurring and why, after which earnestly in search of proof to show or disprove my speculation, and that’s the sociological methodology, primarily.
You could have been working as an ML Engineer at DataGrail for greater than two years. How has your day-to-day work modified with the rise of LLMs?
I’m really within the technique of writing a brand new piece about this. I feel the progress of code assistants utilizing LLMs is de facto fascinating and is altering how lots of people work in ML and in software program engineering. I take advantage of these instruments to bounce concepts off, to get critiques of my approaches to issues or to get various concepts to my method, and for scut work (writing unit assessments or boilerplate code, for instance). I feel there’s nonetheless lots for folks in ML to do, although, particularly making use of our abilities acquired from expertise to uncommon or distinctive issues. And all this isn’t to reduce the downsides and risks to LLMs in our society, of which there are lots of.
You’ve requested if we are able to “save the AI economy.” Do you consider AI hype has created a bubble just like the dot-com period, or is the underlying utility of the tech robust sufficient to maintain it?
I feel it’s a bubble, however that the underlying tech is de facto to not blame. Folks have created the bubble, and as I described in that article, an unimaginable amount of cash has been invested below the belief that LLM expertise goes to supply some sort of outcomes that can command earnings which are commensurate. I feel that is foolish, not as a result of LLM expertise isn’t helpful in some key methods, however as a result of it isn’t $200 billion+ helpful. If Silicon Valley and the VC world have been prepared to simply accept good returns on a reasonable funding, as an alternative of demanding immense returns on a big funding, I feel this may very well be a sustainable area. However that’s not the way it has turned out, and I simply don’t see a approach out of this that doesn’t contain a bubble bursting finally.
A 12 months in the past, you wrote concerning the “Cultural Backlash Against Generative AI.” What can AI corporations do to rebuild belief with a skeptical public?
That is robust, as a result of I feel the hype has set the tone for the blowback. AI corporations are making outlandish guarantees as a result of the following quarter’s numbers all the time want to point out one thing spectacular to maintain the wheel turning. Individuals who take a look at that and sense they’re being lied to naturally have a bitter style about the entire endeavor. It gained’t occur, but when AI corporations backed off the unrealistic guarantees and as an alternative targeted exhausting on discovering affordable, efficient methods to use their expertise to folks’s precise issues, that will assist lots. It will additionally assist if we had a broad marketing campaign of public schooling about what LLMs and “AI” actually are, demystifying the expertise as a lot as we are able to. However, the extra folks be taught concerning the tech, the extra real looking they are going to be about what it could actually and may’t do, so I count on the massive gamers within the area additionally won’t be inclined to do this.
You’ve coated many various matters prior to now few years. How do you determine what to put in writing about subsequent?
I are likely to spend the month in between articles fascinated about how LLMs and AI are exhibiting up in my life, the lives of individuals round me, and the information, and I speak to folks about what they’re seeing and experiencing with it. Generally I’ve a particular angle that comes from sociology (energy, race, class, gender, establishments, and many others) that I wish to use as framing to try the area, or typically a particular occasion or phenomenon offers me an concept to work with. I jot down notes all through the month and after I land on one thing that I really feel actually all for, and wish to analysis or take into consideration, I’ll choose that for the following month and do a deep dive.
Are there any matters you haven’t written about but, and that you’re excited to sort out in 2026?
I truthfully don’t plan that far forward! After I began writing just a few years in the past I wrote down an enormous checklist of concepts and matters and I’ve utterly exhausted it, so lately I’m at most one or two months forward of the web page. I’d like to get concepts from readers about social points or themes that collide with AI they’d like me to dig into additional.
To be taught extra about Stephanie’s work and keep up-to-date together with her newest articles, you may comply with her on TDS or LinkedIn.
