What is "AGI"? How do we measure progress towards it? Does the concept even make sense? What would a post-AGI world look like? Had a lot of fun debating these and other questions with Henry Shevlin: youtu.be/SXj1UsGJGmY?...

Time to look back at my 2025 research. I published a bunch of empirical and philosophic papers (links below) but perhaps my favorite is this one. Kind of a précis for my forthcoming book. Below the other articles somewhat ranked according to how much I like them.

‘By democratising the public sphere, #socialmedia provides a platform for brilliant, heterodox thinkers who would never have achieved prominence through more traditional #media routes.’, schrijft @danwphilosophy.bsky.social. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/is-social-...

Opposing the far right isn’t an excuse to indulge our tribal instincts (literally half my posting on this site, but better stated by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social) www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/tribalism-...

A very interesting data-rich analysis of persuasion on digital media by @benmtappin.bsky.social. Recommend! open.substack.com/pub/benmtapp...

I recently chatted with Henry Shevlin and Rose Guinrich about the psychology, social science, politics, philosophy, and ethics of human-AI "relationships". www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkqu...

Chatted with Henry Shevlin recently about why AI is a powerful tool for education that is nevertheless presenting big problems for our educational institutions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o_l...

"the prevailing negativity is a result of the particular way the discipline is institutionally organized... the overall picture of AI offered by the AI ethics community is one-sided & negatively biased... the ‘nuclear option’ would be to deliberately shrink the field of AI ethics, for its own sake"

Thrilled to have been awarded funding by @acceleratescience.bsky.social @c2d3.cam.ac.uk to develop an AI tool for interpreting dementia profiles from large-scale population modelling of neuroimaging data Big thanks to @raibethlehem.bsky.social and to the Accelerate-C2D3 team for all the support!

People on BlueSky: AI is useless! A stochastic parrot! Mathematicians/biologists/physicists: It is already helping us do frontier technical research and in some cases solve open problems arxiv.org/pdf/2511.16072 (There are of course, as always, many caveats, but the paper is genuinely remarkable)

I talked to Henry Shevlin about the philosophy, politics, and ethics of "Social AI" (AI companions, AI girl/boyfriends, grief bots, etc). www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzgo...

Still time to register for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology, in-person in Melbourne Nov 24-25! Check details and fab keynotes and program on the site👇 #philosophy #neuroskyence sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...

A big problem is that AI/ML models for dementia care are often limited by data unavailability and data drift when moving to the real world. This is even more important now with fast-paced technological innovations and precision medicine for dementia trials.

Very excited to be able to finally share our latest work, "Cloud computing for equitable, data-driven dementia medicine," just published in The Lancet Digital Health! authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S... more info in thread: 🧵

New conversation with Henry Shevlin and Andy Masley on AI and climate change, political tribalism, why so much AI discourse is so bad, the "stochastic parrot"/"glorified auto-complete" critique of ChatGPT, technological determinism, effective altruism, and more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=87CW...

New conversation with Henry Shevlin and Andy Masley on AI and climate change, political tribalism, why so much AI discourse is so bad, the "stochastic parrot"/"glorified auto-complete" critique of ChatGPT, technological determinism, effective altruism, and more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=87CW...

cc: everyone who panicked about Cambridge Analytica, micro-targeting, etc. There's no magic here.

This week, we discuss the evolved logic of shame, guilt, and other self-conscious emotions with Daniel Sznycer youtu.be/OkCBaBSvSzs?... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-xyz24...

A great job, application due November 17th. Please spread and help me with the right hashtags

Philosophers @danwphilosophy.bsky.social and Henry Shevlin just released a podcast on AI and consciousness, I enjoyed this one. This argument from Henry is close to my view.

I recently talked to Henry Shevlin (Uni of Cambridge) about artificial intelligence and consciousness: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rvw...

I wrote about how advanced AI might gradually eat away at human interdependence, dissolving the glue that underpins human solidarity and cooperation. The risk here would not come from misaligned AI, but from how well-aligned AI threatens human alignment 👇 www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/superintel...

Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Regrettably relevant research today Disguised Repression: Targeting Opponents with Nonpolitical Crimes to Undermine Dissent www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Everything you ever wanted to know about why we behave the way we do on social media. The three layers of strategic considerations shaping our online presence: presentation, competition, and coalition building.

🚨✨ Publication alert: How do people in 6 countries (🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇦🇷 🇩🇰 🇯🇵 ) use AI 🤖 and think about it in the context of information, news, and institutions? Our new @reutersinstitute.bsky.social survey research (n ≈ 12,000) with @richardfletcher.bsky.social & @rasmuskleis.bsky.social explores this.

An imbalance of power erodes the quality of public debate. The dominant side faces fewer epistemic constraints on its arguments, while the dominated side has less incentive to produce strong arguments or to engage with the rules of knowledge institutions. www.optimallyirrational.com/p/power-bala...

"I think a lot of our beliefs are pseudo-beliefs and that the goal is to make it difficult to tell the difference between real belief and fake belief, and that is why it's so hard for psychologists to tell the difference because that difficulty is by design."

This week we talk to Dan Williams about belief. Is it veridical or social or both or neither? youtu.be/vBzPtPNbcz8 www.podbean.com/ew/pb-ehzhx-... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

Last week @rachelkleinfeld.bsky.social and I put out a provocation & set of suggestions on how influence has changed and why institutions (& funders) need to change their thinking on shaping public opinion and connecting w/audiences. The old way no longer works. carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Public Philosophy in Brighton - this one's on 10th October.

A cautiously optimistic result on AI and disinformation. A week before 2024 UK elections 13% of all voters used AI to ask about political topics. A randomized trial found this may be good: using AI led to similar gains in true knowledge as doing web research, regardless of model & prompt used.

Is artificial intelligence just another technology or potentially a “superintelligent” alien species that might bring about human extinction? Henry Shevlin and I discuss this and many other issues: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/ai-session...

Worth reading: www.noemamag.com/we-failed-th...

The great @robynrwaller.bsky.social recently appeared on 'The Medical AI' podcast to discuss 'Brain-computer interfaces - coming miracles or technodehumanisation?'. Highly recommend! creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

Why do we watch sport? It is commonly said that it is because of the beauty of athletic performance. In reality, sport taps into our natural interest in status games. This explains many of the seemingly surprising aspects of how we consume it. www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-truth-...

Come to Melbourne for the 2025 Conference of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology Check out the great keynotes - submit your abstract Come join this exciting community of researchers Nov 24-25 - Register now! #philosophy #neuroskyence #philsky sites.google.com/monash.edu/a...

Here's my syllabus and reading list for an introductory, up-to-date course covering the philosophy, ethics, and politics of artificial intelligence: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/philosophy....

New guest essay at 'Conspicuous Cognition' by the great Paul Sagar: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/against-po...

I think anyone who's engaged with AI and climate discourse has noticed that a lot of people are getting really hung up on this. I'm just an individual guy and figured it would be worth a few hours to write some very simple blog posts with middle school math showing that they're mistaken.

🔪"once you appreciate that reputation management is a deep-rooted, pervasive force distorting cognition and belief, you confront a vast space of possible ways this distorting influence might operate"

Yesterday, Google released a new report estimating the environmental footprint per Gemini query. That's very welcome, as lack of any transparency from big tech companies has been a big problem. I hope others follow suit. I wrote about on this on Substack: hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footpri...

I'm sure this will be popular. www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-have-to...

Some people in academia give the name "positivism" or "empiricism" to just anything that involves counting anything at any point. And, like, I just feel like everyone needs to aim higher. Be more ambitious.

🎯"the dominant approach since 2016 fundamentally misunderstands the nature of communication... researchers and policymakers ought to engage with the full complexity of communication processes, including the agency of messengers and audiences"

Henry Shevlin and I recently recorded a conversation about AI. We talked (and disagreed) about: - How similar is ChatGPT-5 to the human mind? - How should we measure AI progress? - Are "super-intelligent" AI systems likely to kill us all? www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/will-ai-ch...

How much can we blame social media for our polarized political climate? @danwphilosophy.bsky.social argues that the narrative that the platforms cause polarization “overlooks deeper political and institutional problems that are reflected on social media, not created by it.”

(Kinda) new paper, with the fab Z Quanbeck, finally out @ Phil Imprint! We defend a combo of epistemic permissivism + limited pragmatism re reasons for belief. This preserves some features of pragmatic encroachment views while avoiding their drawbacks. journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/articl...

So grateful to Frank Augugliaro for designing the cover of our new book! Available everywhere on Sep 16 but never too early to preorder: somebody-book.com @dryan149.bsky.social @michaelbrownstein.bsky.social @mitpress.bsky.social #SocialChange