@eschwitz.bsky.social
Philosopher, UC Riverside. Father. Human.
Congratulations!
07.02.2026 00:20 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Full draft: faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/Sc...
6/6
intelligence, such errors on their own do not demonstrate a system's lack of outstanding general intelligence. Conversely, excellent performance on one type of task, such as an IQ test, cannot warrant assumptions of broad capacities beyond that task domain.
5/6
reduction to a single linear quantity. We conclude with implications for adversarial testing approaches to evaluating AI capacities. If AI is strange intelligence, we should expect that even the most capable systems will sometimes fail in seemingly obvious tasks. On a nonlinear model of AI 4/x
05.02.2026 17:16 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0surprising errors that few humans would make. We develop and defend a nonlinear model of intelligence on which "general intelligence" is not a unified capacity but instead the ability to achieve a broad range of goals in a broad range of environments, in a manner that defies nonarbitrary 3/x
05.02.2026 17:16 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0"strange intelligence". AI intelligence is likely to be strange intelligence, defying familiar patterns of ability and inability, combining superhuman capacities in some domains with subhuman performance in other domains, and even within domains sometimes combining superhuman insight with 2/x
05.02.2026 17:15 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence, by Kendra Chilson and Eric Schwitzgebel
New paper in draft with Kendra Chilson: "Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence"
Abstract:
We endorse and expand upon Susan Schneider's critique of the linear model of AI progress and introduce two novel concepts: "familiar intelligence" and 1/x
Don't create nonconscious AI systems that people react to as if they are genuinely conscious persons. And if we ever do create AI persons with genuine moral standing, don't encase them in a bland box that people are tempted to disregard or devalue.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Emotional Alignment Design Policy, Topoi, Eric Schwitzgebel & Jeff Sebo
My paper with @jeffsebo.bsky.social , "The Emotional Alignment Design Policy", now live at Topoi [link in comments].
Artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from ordinary users that appropriately reflect the entities’ capacities and moral status, or lack thereof.
Today's blog post: Does Global Workspace Theory Solve the Question of AI Consciousness?
Hint: no.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/does...
It might be, depending on how one thinks of the capacity to discriminate. If you think about it stochastically, then you might have a 50% capacity and thus the same capacity in the two cases, but different responsiveness by chance.
23.01.2026 19:41 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Thanks for linking to that thread. Yes, that’s a very similar concern!
23.01.2026 19:39 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
title of Michel's Consciousness Doesn't Do That
Is Signal Strength a Confound in Consciousness Research?
today's blog post, critiquing @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @hakwan.bsky.social -- link in comments
Berggruen header: AI Mimics and AI Children, by Eric Schwitzgebel
There's no shame in losing a long-form popular essay contest on AI consciousness to eminent neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social. His piece: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
Congratulations!
14.01.2026 18:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Of course that's a serious worry!
10.01.2026 15:52 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Today's blog post [link in🧵]: Humble superintelligence as a response to AI risk. Build it humble, cautious, and multilateral. Inspired by Burkean conservatism and philosophical Daoism.
09.01.2026 17:34 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
Writings of 2025, with brief descriptions and links:
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...
How Much Should We Give a Joymachine?
a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...
Debatable AI Persons: No Rights, Full Rights, Animal-Like Rights, Credence-Weighted Rights, or Patchy Rights?
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...
New interview at the Delving In podcast: "Eric Schwitzgebel on the Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I."
www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...
one of my favorite books ever, I'm extremely disappointed by this, but not entirely surprised. Sometimes the portraits are a little too good, a little too inspiring. 2/2
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Fascinating piece in the New Yorker on Oliver Sacks, especially his homosexuality and -- unfortunately! -- the fabrications in his lovely and inspiring essays about his patients, esp. in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Since the latter is 1/2
![The Refrigerator Light Error [illustration by Nicolas Demers, p. 218 of The Weirdness of the World]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tdcgbtd4wvhktrrhksipkuvz/bafkreihdavdufxex5cg2bln6vhfmaxvo5rsw5yfkd2jqe3fqes53ifhgta@jpeg)
The Refrigerator Light Error [illustration by Nicolas Demers, p. 218 of The Weirdness of the World]
We can introspectively test the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness: Just introspect your experience right now. Is there a welter of detail in many sensory modalities at once? If so, GWT must be false.
Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection.
[link in 🧵]
ha!
09.12.2025 18:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0caw caw!
05.12.2025 18:32 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
