Daria Zakharova

The thing about interdisciplinary work is everyone gets to misunderstand you from a unique angle

LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.

An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...

Instead we could come up with and communicate ways that might at least in theory enhance learning and educate students on the use of these tools. Some insight into what AI could be good for and what it’s not good for that the students might gain to advance their general competence could be a plus.

I wonder what a good guide for using AI for studying to offer the students could look like. Seems like forbidding them to use AI only results in the students using it anyway but in these depressing ways, like submitting a fully AI-generates essay.

Well, hello again!

Cover of The Edge of Sentience audiobook.

Excitingly the official audiobook of The Edge of Sentience is out now. Even more excitingly, I have 6 free download codes to give away. DM during the next 24hrs for a chance of getting one!

Glad to see coverage of our work! However, I wish the article (especially the title and the summary) would‘ve presented our approach more carefully / from a different angle - as to avoid the readers interpreting it as if we „confronted LLMs with pain“ or think we made them „experience“ anything.

🔥🔥🔥

I personally wished that the second half of the book - the discussions of application of virtue ethics framework to modern tech & AI was longer. But I also see it as building a basis for further research by first aiming to get the case off the ground.

Highly recommend „Technology and the Virtues“ book by Shannon Vallor!

Hi, just found this awesome 2-pack, could a latecomer possibly join? 🙃

I've done more public philosophy writing this year than ever before. Here is a roundup🧵. Just remember I don't write the headlines.

It's a new epistemic year

I’ve been advised that even as a PhD student, it’s nice to have a website. So, I now have one!

You can see some of my research and other projects there, like an immersive installation where you walk inside a spider’s head.

www.dzakharova.com

This! The ability to act on the world to learn about the world’s causal structure. Heard her speak about this potentially realisable as / close to the „empowerment“ approach in reinforcement learning, very interesting.

Another great read from Melanie Mitchell.

is in offering a way to develop and continuously grow the qualities and capacities needed to deal with the uncertainty, information-overwhelm and the loss of meaning so many of us experience today.

Quite taken by the case for the revival of virtue ethics for our world of modern technology, social media and AI. Where the consequentialist and deontological frameworks seem to fall short (or at least remain incomplete)
1/2

Periodically feel an urge to stare at Goya‘s Witches, like twice a year or so. A mysterious pre-solstice pull?

Marking student essays in Mind&Metaphysics, and I don’t even know what’s lamer: an essay that’s clearly fully AI-generated (I also spotted the student using ChatGPT in class when asked to brainstorm discussion questions) or one where a chunk is just old-school copy-pasted (from a Medium article!)

Yesss!!!

I had the pleasure to be a judge again, this year at the regional finals. And again I am amazed at how articulate, thoughtful and (mostly) coherent in their presentation these high school students are.

What a cool exercise and an experience for the young citizens!

Going to be reading Technology and Virtues by @shannonvallor.bsky.social over the holidays for a virtue ethics perspective and an extra-inspiration for teaching Data & AI Ethics next term.

Totally selfish plug for our "Confabulation" main conference paper at #ACL2024 on exactly this issue: arxiv.org/abs/2406.04175

Cool research direction! Also thinking of potential questions for phil mind of AI

Thinking of the actual pronunciation of “bsky” - like a weird plural (?) of biscuit

Not aware of a consensus on this but could it possibly be…biscuits? (sorry 🙈)

A fantastic inaugural lecture by @birchlse.bsky.social at the @lsephilosophy.bsky.social yesterday, taking the audience on “a walk along the edge of sentience”. The pdf version of his book can be downloaded *for free* at academic.oup.com/book/57949

Proud to be a member of Jonathan’s team!

Great power and great responsibility: how consciousness changes the world A vivid account of the evolution of minds will fill readers with wonder — and challenge how they think about their moral responsibility to protect the planet.

Alan Love reviews Peter Godfrey Smith’s new book, Living on Earth.

#Philsky #PhilSci 🐋🌱🦫🦋🧠🗃️🧪

“Mazviita Chirimuuta’s The Brain Abstracted is a landmark work in the philosophy of neuroscience.”
Indeed!