Yann Sweeney

This moment from our latest episode with science writer @edyong209.bsky.social is 🔥

We asked Ed — how do we talk up the benefits of science in the face of government cuts? He told us that's the wrong approach. 🧪

Listen wherever, or watch on Spotify 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/7Evh...

Wow, incredible. Huge win for the No Azure for Apartheid organizers.

estsjournal.org/index.php/es...

trying this with GPT-5 and charting new frontiers in gaslighting

Early indications point to that word being "consciousness". Deep. From www-cdn.anthropic.com/4263b940cabb...

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This includes rolling out groundbreaking new tools over the next two years to support GPs. AI scribes will end the need for clinical notetaking, letter drafting, and manual data entry to free up clinicians’ time to focus on treating patients. Saving just 90 seconds on each GP appointment can save the same time as adding 2,000 more doctors into general practice.

Putting to one side whether these tools will be safe/effective the idea that "saving 90s seconds" on each GP appointment is same as adding 2000 doctors to general practice is such naive utilitarian* logic

www.gov.uk/government/n...

* or Gradgrindian, if I remember Dickens' Hard Times correctly?

Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology - Nature An analysis of research papers and citing patents indicates the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance

1/

# avoid the nightmare bicycle

NEW: Official advisers CCC say UK shld cut emissions 87% by 2040

⚖️Net cost of net-zero 73% less than thought
💷Total cost to 2050 = £108bn (~£4bn/yr, 0.2% GDP)
🏡🚗H’hold energy/fuel bills to fall £1,400
🔌Electrification is key

THREAD + charts

www.carbonbrief.org/...

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What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

My copy of Silicon Valley Engineer, August 1989. Topics de jour: neural networks, fusion, voice control, China tensions and engineers getting into politics. Plus ça change.

One of the biggest areas of AI hype right now is the notion that it will hyperaccelerate scientific progress. I understand why people think this — AI is already accelerating scientific _production_. 🧵

AI makes Line Go Up, but… AI has a tendency to make the Line Go Up. It also has a tendency to make Money Go Up. But that doesn’t mean that everyone’s happy, and for a good reason: The value capture around AI ten…

This is really nice piece by @peterbihr.com -it reintroduces to ppl to the terms "above/below the API", relating it to AI.

It's essentially raising where this API lands within orgs, to place more people below it. Maybe good for the top, deffo not the rest.

thewavingcat.com/2025/01/ai-m...

Opportunities and regulation of AI - Yann Sweeney In this podcast, we are in conversation with Yann Sweeney, Senior Editor for Computing and Robotics at Nature. We discuss recent developments in AI, how the UK and other countries are pursuing the opp

A lot has happened since I was on the Foundation for Science and Technology podcast last week, talking all things AI
soundcloud.com/user-3518993... 🧪

potential benefits of LLMs should be weighed against this increasing cost of verification, for now at least. human verification = the human takes the blame for hard-to-spot cockups. cf airline pilots, the 'moral crumple zone' papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers....

"OpenAI says that although o1 fared better than GPT-4 on its internal tests of hallucinations, anecdotally its testers said the model hallucinated more, in particular coming up with detailed bad answers that were thus more convincing."

A straightforward ethical conundrum for academics. If you’d rather not worry about your research ending up onboard a killer drone over Gaza or in surveillance tech securing Fortress Europe from climate migrants, then don’t take those military euros.

This might be the first time after 10 years that boosted trees are not the best default choice when working with data in tables.
Instead a pre-trained neural network is, the new TabPFN, as we just published in Nature 🎉

Biden plan would encourage AI data centers on federal lands Worries the U.S. will lose the AI arms race fuels an eleventh-hour Biden administration effort to allow massive data centers and power plants on public land.

Relevant to AI climate impact: "Power consumed by U.S. data centers has grown by 50% since last year, & it is expected to grow that much again by the end of 2025, ... Data centers are expected to consume as much as 17% of all U.S. electricity by 2030 — more than quadruple what they consume now."

Screenshot of open roles at Fauna Robotics

Want a job in robotics in New York? faunarobotics.com

Gently floating home after a mesmerising performance from One Leg One Eye @firedrawnear.bsky.social at the Trades Club #HebdenBridge tonight.
If you can get a ticket for the current tour, don't hesitate 𓆙

“Denied by AI,” the multi-part STAT News investigation of how #UnitedHealthcare used an opaque algorithmic system to deny care to people who needed it is a #mustread www.statnews.com/2023/03/13/m...

"In this essay for my assignment, I will comprehensively compare and contrast various sorting algorithms including bubble sort, selection sort and insertion sort. As a running example, let us sort this array of US soft drinks sales figures, lead by the crisp and refreshingly flavoured Coca Cola"

📢NEW: 'Open' AI systems aren't open. The vague term, combined w frothy AI hype is (mis)shaping policy & practice, assuming 'open source' AI democratizes access & addresses power concentration. It doesn't.

@smw.bsky.social, @davidthewid.bsky.social & I correct the record👇
nature.com/articles/s41...

you're welcome!

ah yes, engineering sounds good - thanks!

sorry to be a buzzkill www.nature.com/articles/s41...

hello Manuel, I'm an editor at nature, physics is the closest I could find to fitting my topics -https://www.nature.com/nature/editors , scholar.google.com/citations?us...

Come work with us - Nature is looking for its next systems neuroscience editor 👇