Anirudh Wodeyar @awodeyar@qoto.org

Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice & health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages” - @alexhanna & @emilymbender

Vital:

https://t.co/j1V4F8yOj0

Online Now: Theory of collective mind https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(23)00168-7?rss=yes&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

What is the cost of science being conducted in English? @tatsuya_amano &co reveal that non-native English speakers spend more effort than native speakers in conducting scientific activities (reading, writing, preparing presentations...) #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/46Rfptc

With people flooding in from the bird site today, let me post a quick introduction: Hi, I’m Jens, I’m not posting enough here, hope to do better in the future. My background is that I used to do the #science and now I’m just talking about it, in any way that I can imagine.
If you’re reading this, I think you’re cool.

Alright folks, ready for this morning's lesson in #AIhype? On the dissection table:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/04/18/what-the-technology-behind-chatgpt-can-do-for-governance-risk-and-compliance/?sh=340c66d136db

Right off the bat, the headline looks fishy (which is why I clicked through, actually). Governance, risk and compliance sound like domains where you don't want a chaos-machine, TYVM.

Oh, and while we're here. Take a gander at that byline. Membership is fee-based, is it? Is this in fact an infomercial?

>>

Trying to find ways to get better at doing math by studying its neural correlates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_qwFfldMK4
"Overlapping neural responses to symbolic math and formal logic in the intra-parietal sulcus" Yun-Fei Liu, Dr. Shipra Kanjlia, and Dr. Marina Bedny 2020

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603205113
"Origins of the brain networks for advanced mathematics in expert mathematicians" Marie Amalric and Stanislas Dehaene 2016

The dissimilarity with language networks is interesting, and maybe my hyperlexia and difficulties with dyscalculia relate to one another. The intraparietal involvement in math, logic, and the multiple demand system is extra interesting to me though, because it is also correlated with integration of perceptual information to organize scenes and represent objects. Thinking of doing #mathematics as manipulating imagined objects, instead of language-like representations like nominalism suggests, seems to fit the data.

It's like something the mathematician Yuri Manin said in his book, "Mathematics as Metaphor" (2007):

"But what are we studying when we are doing mathematics?
A possible answer is this: we are studying ideas which can be handled as if they were real things. (P. Davis and R. Hersh call them 'mental objects with reproducible properties')"

Just out in Nature Neuroscience:

Cortical regulation of two-stage rapid eye movement sleep

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01195-2?utm_source=neuro_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=toc_41593_25_12&utm_content=20221130

Nature

Cortical–hippocampal coupling during manifold exploration in motor cortex
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05533-z

I’m very proud to share: A smartphone intervention that enhances real-world memory and promotes differentiation of hippocampal activity in older adults.
Work led by @_chris__martin_@twitter.com, w/ @chrishoney@twitter.com @bryan_hong_@twitter.com @rachelnewsome@twitter.com @melellen_m@twitter.com (1/6)

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214285119

The beginning of this AMA episode from Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast was really great. I don't mean the initial part related to climate denial and social media (even though that was also interesting), but instead the next part about how he judges whether a new scientific paper is worth his time to dig deeper, since our attention is maybe our most precious resource.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/04/03/ama-april-2023/
(1/2)

A striking visualisation of #climatechange: the date of Kyoto cherry blossoms' reaching full bloom, plotted over the past 1000 years.

Thanks to the cultural significance of cherry blossoms in Japan, we have data on the specific day of the year when a very particular species of cherry blossom (P. jamasakura) reached "full-flowering" (満開) in a specific area on the outskirts of Kyoto (Arashiyama), all the way back to 800 AD.

The trend of the past 50 years is hard to miss…

A version of the "zooming in" animation up in the thread where the color of hats and clusters is based on their rotation (and the saturation is based on hat/cluster type), and the lowest level oscillates between the possible shapes.

We're looking for help to build a wireless, solar-powered chat network across the Philly area! Are you interested in learning about off-grid solar power? Do you have a sunny place on your roof, in your yard, or near an upstairs window where you can leave a small radio transceiver? This workshop may be for you!

Each participant will receive a free kit with all the parts needed to build a solar-powered LoRa radio node. You'll assemble the kit, mount it in a weatherproof enclosure (provided by you), and use the Meshtastic app to start sending encrypted text messages.

Registration opens Monday, April 3rd at 8:30 p.m. You can sign up on our site:
https://iffybooks.net/event/solar-chat-network

Supplies for this workshop are provided by a grant from the Engaged Humanities Studio at Swarthmore College. Many thanks to @pixouls for helping plan the event!

I don't know whether it counts as hyperventilating, but my relative high level of concern about the type of AI that LeCun put out there himself with #Galactica is that not that there is some sort of hard take off. It's that he and so many others are creating systems that can flood the zone with shit at a rate that would leave Steve Bannon reeling in shock and awe.