:-) Emoticon Turns 44; Inventor Fahlman Asks CMU Faculty "Do You Work on LLMs?"
aran_nayebi · x · 2026-09-19
The :-) emoticon, first typed by CMU Professor Scott Fahlman at 11:44 am ET on Sept. 19, 1982, turns 44. Aran Nayebi, a faculty member in CMU's Machine Learning Department, met Fahlman this week and got his autograph on :-) shirts. On hearing Nayebi was MLD faculty, Fahlman immediately asked, "What do you work on? LLMs?" — and upon hearing "neuroscience", replied "So Real I", adding "Faculty keep getting younger."
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