Another Christmas, another year I will tell you to ditch the Christmas pudding and make yourself a @nigella.bsky.social sticky toffee pudding instead

Under two weeks of my sabbatical left, and I have two messages: 1. Merry Xmas for tomorrow 2. Death to Chronos

Wildly different things, tasks, techniques, subspecialties being lumped into "AI" and then being conflated with each other, doesn't help. Different types of models vs the techniques to train them vs the tasks they are supposed to accomplish, all under "AI".

My top five favourite words to pronounce like they’re Greek philosophers…   5. Monocles 4. Bicycles 3. Popsicles 2. Obstacles 1. Testicles

Often the answer is "don't use it!". I never want to read an AI-generated novel or essay, look at an AI image, or listen to AI music. I'm not interested in the inner mental life of the shoggoths.

I remember when Michael Gove said that the public had "had enough of experts" in the run up to the Brexit referendum

Tempted to start ranking star wars movies and sneak in deep space 9

As my colleague Chris Giles put it: "The economics of this is pretty simple. 1. You should be a billionaire if you're worth it 2. Probably, no one is 3. If you're not worth it and a billionaire - you've got your money from rent exploitation - which should be stopped/taxed"

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

Almost all musicals are significantly worse in the second half. The only exception to this is Les Miserables, and that's because Fantine is out of the picture

Of course I have beaten the jet lag, it's entirely coincidental that I took a 4 hour nap at 3pm 😐

"It is terrible that Shabana Mahmood faces overt racism for being a high profile Asian woman" = good argument "The key to ending overt racism against Asians in Britain is that we must Stop the Boats" = a very bad argument indeed, on so many levels

A great set of back of the envelope calculations - and adds to my deeply held belief that we should turn every single golf course into a wild meadow or public park

Very interested to read this in detail next week, and see what lessons we can learn if any for designing discrete active inference agents for situations where handling continuous variables is either too hard or too expensive 🙌🏾

It's too cloudy where I am so I'm just watching the 'roras on a webcam instead

Tonight I am staying at an abandoned high school converted into a cafe/hotel/cat sanctuary. The question is, what should I write on the blackboard?

What an exciting opportunity for a crossover special!

Before AI my best explanation for bad writing was that people are terrible. Now I can blame LLMs instead and be hopeful that people are not terrible after all

I will never understand why BBC Royal Correspondents write like this.

I sorely regret not walking out of Deadpool 3. At 34 I didn't have enough years left to waste on it

...and another.

This lack of reliability is I believe the real reason most companies haven't seen massive productivity gains with agents. Just because a system *can* get it right, doesn't mean it *will*. And in LLM agent loops, errors earn compound interest.

"if you have no policy, the only thing you can successfully communicate is that you are out of your depth." 👏🏾 This doesn't just apply to politics, you see it in businesses *everywhere*

It would have been so easy to write that Labour statement in a way that reflected their policy but attacked Lam/Reform "We believe that the right to stay here permanently should be based on contribution but suggesting deporting people who've earned that right is appalling."

This was a fantastic talk, and I have stolen a dozen ideas for improving the talks that I give in the future. Worth checking the recording even if you don't know anything about casual inference or psychology in general.

An incredible sentence I will be stealing for the future.

Being an IC software engineer probably has the best ratio of "do interesting work"/"admin of interesting work". But it still requires constant effort and focus, and ruthless prioritisation. Can't imagine how the academics cope

Well worth making the distinction between audio books and radio play adaptations. Don't do a half-assed effort at both, pick one form and do it *well*

Very excited to be going to IWAI next week, and after that I am on sabbatical until January 🎉 iwaiworkshop.github.io

Finally got round to listening to @roelkonijn.bsky.social on "this guy sucked" talking about Alcibiades - great fun even if you don't know much about ancient greek history like me! pca.st/vtgmuqi7

At some point I will get off my arse and create a blue sky feed that is exactly the same as the standard feed but hides all the chain quote posts

I wrote a short piece for the Observer on the attacks in Manchester. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

This is the clearest explanation of the AT Protocol and *why it matters* I have read so far

Maybe it's just me, but this is an incredibly confusing visualisation.

I know everyone bangs on about exercise being good for mental health - the conclusion I gave arrived at for me is that exercise is horrible whilst it is happening, but not exercising for a while is just a different sort of horrible. Pick your poison 🤷🏾‍♂️

Ann-other was right there 😂

Have written up some of my thoughts about the increasingly sinister use of 'non-UK born' and 'white British' in the British press. The obsession with 'white British' citizens over other British citizens harms all of us and needs to be called out. benansell.substack.com/p/who-counts

What do you reckon then?

"It’s interesting to see the issue spoken about in terms of civic cohesion, with a responsibility on us all to tackle demographic challenges, rather than a burden for the young alone" On the German idea of a "Boomer solidarity tax" and national service... www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

"Heirarchical" gets me like a usb 2.0 connection

I am going to a Pokémon themed stag do in a couple of weeks. My immediate thought was to go as Brock. My wife suggested I go as diglett 😭

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

I started playing hollow knight to see what all the fuss is about. Jfc when did video games get so hard? I JUST WANT TO EXPLORE!

Waiting for updates to finish Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

Scientists struggle to follow these standards, what hope do the media or the rest of the public have?

My day of free headshots for science people went so well in London that I'm doing one in Cambridge. Oct 9th afternoon at Canopy (CISL). Email [email protected] if you'd like free pictures to use to promote yourself and do websites and socials and that.

And frankly I prefer a dynamic that secures decent housing for people in the greatest housing need first, than one that secures decent housing for those in greatest housing need a few years down the line via chain dynamics

I would be interested to read an analysis on whether it would be enough for the 10-15% drifting (let's call them reform curious) to just stay at home in the next election rather than for labour to specifically convert them.