Melanie Mitchell

Worth reading.

What universities will the government extort / blackmail next?

Tom Lehrer, American Cassandra From his first song to his last, Lehrer’s dark humor heaped derision on all things precious.

Lovely obit of Tom Lehrer: momentmag.com/tom-lehrer-a...

Before reading this I didn't know that, in 2020, he relinquished copyright and put all his songs in the public domain.

I think there is not a generally agreed-upon definition of "concept" or "fully concepts".

Hmmm....

"there is ... substantial evidence for innate concepts of causality, number, and person..." (from Susan Carey,
The Origin and Evolution of Everyday Concepts)

Thanks! But she has talked about innate cognitive representations AS concepts (or at least "conceptual") for a long time.

I wasn't there, but it sounds like something she would say if she wanted us to know she was being held hostage and needed rescue.

PSA: Just trotting out the aphorism that “all models are wrong, but some are useful” doesn’t mean *your* model is among the latter…

⬇️

Maybe Meta can hire the National Science Foundation. I hear there is some science expertise there, and they are short by $1B+

Same. I get at least one per day. And they're often convinced that OpenAI & other companies are suppressing this massive story.

You are a maestro at playing AI Overview.

I'm thrilled to be part of this project with Ellie Pavlick, @geomblog.bsky.social and many others.

Same here! Though with some effort, I could see the purple felt carrots.

The GOAT of comedic song writing (and performing)! May his memory be a blessing and a reminder of the joy of brilliant silliness (e.g., my personal favorite: "Lobachevsky" www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4v...)

Thank you so much for the kind words -- this means a lot to me!

♥️

Thank you! My 2 year term as quarterly columnist for Science is over. But I hope this means I’ll be able to post more frequently on my Substack blog.

Why AI chatbots lie to us A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine needed to collect and format some data from a website, and he asked the latest version of Anthropic’s generative AI system, Claude, for help. Claude cheerfully agr...

In my latest (and last!) column for Science’s Expert Voices series, I write about the reasons behind AI chatbots’ “deceptive” behaviors (and why Claude threatened a fictional CEO with blackmail).

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Fun snippet recounting the 1956 Dartmouth summer workshop on AI. Especially Minsky's prediction at the end.

From raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/da...

In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.

Thank you for these efforts!

Yes, a bunch of different studies on this. E.g., dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

I'm not sure if any of these studies have been very successful.

This map gave me a bit of hope

goodtroubleliveson.org?SQF_SOURCE=p...

🧠How “old” is your model?

Put it to the test with the KiVA Challenge: a new benchmark for abstract visual reasoning, grounded in real developmental data from children and adults.

🏆 Prizes:
🥇$1K to the top model
🥈🥉$500
📅 Deadline: 10/7/25
🔗 kiva-challenge.github.io
@iccv.bsky.social

Are LLMs truly intelligent? New study questions the ’emergence’ of AI abilities - TechTalks A new paper argues that "emergent abilities" in LLMs aren't true intelligence. The difference is crucial and has implications for real-world applications.

Very nice summary of our recent paper on emergence and LLMs:

bdtechtalks.com/2025/07/14/l...

Sean's ASMR channel.

Cowen: Many (not all) insiders now say AGI stands a good chance of happening in the next few years. They all use different vague definitions, so I will make up a brand new vague definition that doesn't have anything to do with AGI, and state with confidence that it is the official definition.

A new definition for AGI just dropped, and it is a bad one.

You might also want to turn off the request for people to "pledge" before they subscribe -- that turns some people off from subscribing. (I learned this when I started my Substack.)

"in high heels and backwards", I hope

Link you posted above doesn't work ("this page is private"). I think this is the correct link: philipball86.substack.com