I have a lurker problem. I have come to appreciate the importance of social media, but I find that I dislike participating. I can't help but find online exchanges hopelessly superficial compared to IRL ones. How do others deal with this? Do you see it as speaking into the void and just embrace that?

I will never buy shit from Meta.

Netanyahu is as bad as Trump. This isn't how this shit works. Iranians get nukes, then you have MAD, stalemate. Launching all out conventional strikes just leads to all out protracted conventional war. Loss of deterrence. Immense, immense gamble. Horrible strategy by the Israelis. Terrible news.

A technology with an agency capable of doing nontrivial tasks, without a serious sense of ethics, is a fundamentally abhorrent technology that should never be developed. As soon as it is--and it looks like every AI company is trying--we are going to see it causing ACTUAL DEATHS. This is a crisis!

Although I know the LLM is not a sentient being, based on my (incomplete) knowledge of the research, the AI field moves so fast and the technology is so good that I can't help but aim to talk to it with the same respect that I would a human. And it seems like this is actually the correct decision.

As far as I know, the book project I released in January was the first and only book written by a non-neuroscientist on the emerging field of neuroAI. It was only a 30,000 word proof-of-concept, so not quite a complete book, but I'm not aware of anything else like it. mordecwhy.substack.com

I have come to loathe the incessant bulletpoints of AI text generators.

I feel like one of the most under appreciated parts of "what work is" is something like "stress decompression," like just sort of looking at what you have to do, reacting cognitively and emotionally to it, getting a little flummoxed, letting time pass, and then gradually getting over it.

My Google spam filters have been absolutely sucking in the last year. It's time to change email from gmail.

Can we just come out in the open and talk about deep neural networks as an increasingly well validated paradigm for making simulations of brain regions? There is a desperate need for society to understand what's going on with modern AI, and far too much tiptoeing in these discussions.

New research shows that heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization. I talked to the researchers about whether AI companies will learn the lesson that social networks didn't: www.platformer.news/openai-chatg...

There is a fundamental optimism to journalistic work, and all virtuous work, in general: The idea that the payoff of the work to others will make it worthwhile. I have come across many people, in my time, who have had that spark of optimism burned out of them. And I try not to blame them.

Maybe it's the core ethical truth of humanity that we are all always just living on the edge of the knife; partways, all the time, killing to survive, partways, all the time, trying not to kill. Always, trying to take the lesser evil. Always failing.

When I think about how the US has gotten where it is politically, I can't help but see it as a morose reflection of its individuals; people taking jobs as bad cops; polluters; greedy CEOs; advertising liars; and so on. All we see, politically, is the internal decay of society becoming external.

Where do scientists who are part-employed by tech companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, etc. draw the line? When do they start to take issue with the way their employers actively pursue profit from exploiting people's well being? Technologies designed to be addictive? Military tech?

It's obvious why the wealthy adapt fascist ideologies, which offer them a rare refuge of soothing and sympathizing in the face of their greed and exploitation. And, I do feel all humans deserve compassion. The problem with billionaires is the way they can multiply their own personal suffering.

Professor, given the significant correlations that have been discovered between LLMs and the human language network, much like those between NNs and visual cortex, should we also be considering the responsible use of LLMs from the POV of seeing them as cortical analogs? Serious/respectful question

Integrating LLMs into search is taking a pretty predictable playbook: first, growing engagement; second, introducing ads into conversations; third, optimizing engagement on ad sales. Needless to say, this will be a new and terrible breed of recommendation engine, with bad implications for alignment.

I am optimistic that my book project will eventually go down as a useful and important resource. Eventually, more and more people are going to wonder what the hell has been going on at the intersection of neuroscience and AI, and they will need ways to understand it.

Yesterday, I posted an essay about why the neuroscience community might be coming to a reckoning similar to the AI community, where concerns around technological advances should perhaps start becoming just as important as the advances, themselves. www.lesswrong.com/posts/oRuebC...

In the last couple weeks, I've been trying to figure out how to get across the importance of the deep links between AI and brain regions that have been discovered. And I guess the most important takeaway seems the way that they certify progress in AI as real progress. And that's a little scary.

Some good discussions about the project on Reddit, as when u/crt09 posited that even if we are increasingly building something like synthetic cortexes, then that's not that much different from building robot arms, or calculators. What do others think? www.reddit.com/r/Futurology...

Many people react with great skepticism to the idea of there being close correspondences between brain regions and AI programs. And, it's right to be skeptical. I've been adjusting the project page to try to be more clear about that. However, it's also important to pay attention to the evidence.

Hey @patrickmineault.bsky.social, do you have any thoughts on this project, closely related to your research? Trying to get the perspective of more neuroscientists. Recently updated. www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

I have decided to update the Kickstarter page by relegating many of the more comprehensive details to footnotes sections. I hope that this may make the nature of the fundraiser a little less opaque. www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

Deleted the post I made yesterday, because I don't think I phrased it well. But basically, this is my question for neuroscientists: Does the public need to know that we seem to be building technologies (AI) that have so much in common with artificial or synthetic brain cortexes?

I had no idea I could be even more disappointed at these spineless cowards.

The shit that grows on old potatoes looks alien as hell

If you've looked at the book project, what is stopping you from reposting it? 1️⃣ I don't see why it's so important. 2️⃣ Show me your citations. 3️⃣ I haven't looked at it yet. 4️⃣ Some other reason. 📊 Show results

Such an important article by @shakeelhashim.com! Two thoughts. First, I'd question whether the blame is better placed on a lack of funding. Second, please PLEASE look at the Kickstarter I launched last week. Because I am literally a journalist who is trying to do this, but hasn't funding!

An open letter to the connectionists mailing list, which was just rejected by the moderator. "In short, are we being too cautious about sharing the links between brains and AI with the public?" mordecwhy.substack.com/p/an-open-le...

Interesting book proposal about how neuroscience enabled AI. Is this on the right path? Will you read it?

I've added a new summary to the top of the Kickstarter, thanks to the advice of the excellent @matthewkressel.net. I think what I'm seeing right now is that I may need to clarify the importance of what's been happening in neuroscience. Refining the message! www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

Consider supporting the writing of this book by Mordechai (physicist turned journalist) on how neuroscience influences AI by pre-ordering it (start at 10 USD) You can check in his sample pages (around 40) that his writing is engaging and scholarly. Please RT 🙏 www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

Woohoo we've reached 10 backers people! Yeah! Now could we get some order of magnitude scaling!?! www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

.55% percent funded in 3 days, woohoo! Let's go, not that far from 1%! Great job, thank you supporters! www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

Although, the book is really mainly more about the journey of neuroscientists, and the scientific method, and what those have to say about AI, rather than being specifically AI focused.

Ok, well, I've just released a Kickstarter project for the book concept I've been working on in the last year. It's a journalist's take on what's been happening in AI, from a neuroscience perspective. It has 30 days to raise $77,800 in book preorders. www.kickstarter.com/projects/454...

Hello hello