{"id":202,"date":"2026-09-17T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/?p=202"},"modified":"2026-09-17T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:00:00","slug":"odtu-academics-conversation-mehmet-ali-erkan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/2026\/09\/17\/odtu-academics-conversation-mehmet-ali-erkan\/","title":{"rendered":"ODT\u00dc Academics Conversation: Mehmet Ali Erkan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this conversation, I discuss my academic journey, the opportunities offered by undergraduate statistics education at METU, experiences in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, and broader questions around interpretability, model safety and future risks.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube \"><div class=\"lyte-wrapper fourthree\" style=\"width:420px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_0-6y-XWffEc\"><div id=\"lyte_0-6y-XWffEc\" data-src=\"\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/0-6y-XWffEc\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\"><\/div><\/div><button tabindex=\"0\" class=\"play\"><\/button><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/0-6y-XWffEc\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/0-6y-XWffEc\/0.jpg\" alt=\"YouTube video thumbnail\" width=\"420\" height=\"295\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:420px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A conversation on academic life, statistics at METU, artificial intelligence, NLP, interpretability, model safety and future risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metu.edu.tr\/maerkan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}