Analects

Here you'll find all the btrmt. content from across the projects.

See everything I have on:
digital-architecture

btrmt.

Analects

filter by:

Digital Architecture

stuff On our digital personhood

show:

article

Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.

AI Hallucination is just Man-Guessing

article

One time I was out drinking with some Swedish folks and they told me about the word killgissa. It means something like ‘man-guessing’, referring to when you sound like you know what you’re talking about but you’re actually just guessing. I reckon AI hallucination is just man-guessing, but on your behalf. To explain, I first have to convince you that human reason isn’t actually that reasonable. With any luck it’ll make you better at managing your own processes of reason and your AIs. Let’s see.
Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.

filed under:

article

AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different <em>values</em> for than environment, and until all three align, they will never <em>actually</em> be human-like.

AI is never human-like

article

People treat lots of stuff like they treat humans. AI is one of them. We talk about how human-like they are. How long until their ‘intelligence’ is like our intelligence. How long until they start doing human things, like murdering their competitors. Things like this. But AI isn’t even approaching human-like. In two very fundamental ways. And until those things change, they’ll continue to be completely incomprehensible to us.
AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different values for than environment, and until all three align, they will never actually be human-like.

filed under:

article

Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

It's not social media, life is just worse

article

It has been pretty trendy for the last little while to notice that mental health problems are on the rise, and also social media use is on the rise, and so probably mental health problems are on the rise because social media is an attention sucking monster. But research on the topic doesn’t seem to find any obvious connection between the two. Lots of people are talking about this now, so I will run you through the ‘social media isn’t actually that bad’ thing then give you some other things to stress about instead.
Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

filed under:

article

AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of consciousness make me suspect that less stressful alternatives are equally plausible.

AI isn't that scary

article

As a brain scientist, people often level questions at me about how worried we should be about the ‘rise of AI’. AIs are brain-like things, I study brains, people think I might have some ideas. I’m not really an AI person. But I do have some ideas, and since it keeps coming up, I thought I’d write them down. I’ll give you my usual counterpoints to the alarmist talking points. Then I’ll spend a bit of time talking about why I’m particularly not that worried about AI trying to kill us, from the perspective of someone who studies the brain.
AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of consciousness make me suspect that less stressful alternatives are equally plausible.

filed under:

article

The most successful facts about the world are the ones that subvert our weakly held beliefs. They look like they’re about improvement, but they’re more often simply entertainment dressed up like education.

Malcolm Gladwell Shit

article

Facts about the world don’t merely sit about waiting to be ‘discovered’. Facts are constructed to fill a need, and the dimensions of the world that these facts reveal to us will reflect less the world, and more the need … The recent climb in non-fiction is an example of this. The need that this huge appetite for educational facts about the world is attending to isn’t education. No, these facts are in the business of entertainment. It fills our downtime with something interesting, something so interesting, in fact, that it doubles as social capital.
The most successful facts about the world are the ones that subvert our weakly held beliefs. They look like they’re about improvement, but they’re more often simply entertainment dressed up like education.

filed under:

Newsletter
Join over 2000 of us. Get the newsletter.