Better playing through algorithms
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What if the superpower of the future is self-discipline. The discipline to write enough code yourself to understand coding well enough to effectively outsource coding to agents. The discipline to learn math by proving theorems yourself. The discipline to write your own texts, so you learn to think. The discipline to pay attention. The discipline to sit with emotionally uncomfortable situations…
In the following, I will try sketch a way of thinking about human intelligence and human nature through emphasizing its difference from the various methods and systems we call artificial intelligence. This is rooted in my strong belief that talking about a single-dimensional “intelligence” that one can have more or less of, and the obvious extension to asking whether humans or machines are “more…
I read things, write things, and talk to people. The proportions vary, but that’s essentially what I do. Or rather: those are my observable activities. I also think. The thinking often happens when I read, write, or talk, but also when I walk, drive, or take the subway or elevator. And when I shower! That exclamation mark! I should shower more. Once upon a time I also programmed. I even considered…
The scientific ecosystem is struggling to deal with AI-written papers, and this is a great opportunity to revisit how we publish, where, and why. As many have noticed, a properly prompted modern LLM can produce complete papers that look like real science to qualified scientists in many fields. Yes, really. Whether these papers are actually correct, novel, interesting, insightful, and get their…
For most of my adult life, I was too cowardly to write this text, never mind posting it. I was worried about what people would think, and the repercussions on my career. Would people still take me seriously? But I’m now a whole full Professor of Computer Science at a top university, with all kinds of fancy metrics and titles to point to. Time to stop being such a pussycat. Here’s the thing: I’ve…
They say we should educate people about AI, because we all need to get good at using AI. But what does it mean to be “good at using AI”? I’m not sure. Understanding the technical underpinnings of modern AI models only helps a little bit; I’ve done AI research for 20 years and I’m not sure I’m a particularly skilled user of AI. But here are my two cents, and 2800 words. It seems to me that there…
It is unavoidable that AI will be a major political issue soon. Or perhaps more appropriately: several major issues. As a technologist, I sympathize with the instinct to try to avoid sullying a fine technology with politics. But in a democratic society we should discuss important things that affect us all, or even just many of us. We need to decide what we should do with or about these things.…
I was at an event on AI for science yesterday, a panel discussion here at NeurIPS. The panelists discussed how they plan to replace humans at all levels in the scientific process. So I stood up and protested that what they are doing is evil. Look around you, I said. The room is filled with researchers of various kinds, most of them young. They are here because they love research and want to…
A thought experiment: What if every sufficiently expensive machine learning model was required to immediately be open-sourced? This would mean that weights, code for running the model, and comprehensive details about the training procedure would be made available to everyone. Perhaps also the training data. Sufficiently expensive could mean a model that cost a million dollars or more to train. AI…
Star Trek and The Culture are two of my favorite science fiction universes. Star Trek is at this point a vast franchise spanning multiple media and decades, but in my mind the central works are the two TV shows, The Next Generation and Deep Space 9 . The Culture, on the other hand, is portrayed throughout nine novels by Scottish sci-fi writer Iain M. Banks. It's a safe assumption that most of you…
