Mel Andrews

manuscript central wrapped (you can only see it after resetting your password)

I have always maintained that there is philosophically meaty work to be done here, once we can hack our way through the glut of superficial engagement and low-hanging fruit.

A few years ago research in philosophy of machine learning was almost exclusively rubbish. That’s still the majority of what I am asked to review or see in print but I cannot express enough how refreshing it is that a modest percent of PhilML is now interesting and diligent work.

I understand the temptation. I really do. The other day I said to myself “I have more important things to do with my big important human brain than to fiddle around with CSS. This is a good job for an LLM.” I created a nightmare for myself that has taken hours and hours to undo.

or the people around them, every interaction with an information source now requires orders of magnitude more time and effort to work around the glut of fabricated, meaningless garbage these sources are being flooded with.

What strikes me over and over again about the reality we are currently creating with so-called “generative AI” is that it’s always pitched as saving human time and effort. But this is only true if you are a parasitic grifter. For anyone with principles, anyone who cares about reality

Image shows four copies of the new book The Code of the Warrior, by Shannon E French, third edition, out with Bloomsbury press (2025). The cover is gold with white and black lettering, and has pictures of a battle axe, a katana, an assegai, and an assault rifle. The books are propped up on a dark green velvet couch.

Shameless self promotion, but hopefully forgivable, given the moment we’re in right now. Military ethics is under grave threat. SecDef Hegseth is perverting the “warrior ethos” and putting the mental, moral, and spiritual health of all U.S. service members in jeopardy.

Very much honored to have made the list.

Very happy to see realistic appraisals of language models and uptake of these accounts in legal deliberation contexts.

teaching students through misspellings

provocatively: inciting provocation

provacatively: promoting bovine supremacy

I had the privilege of delivering my first talk at @princetoncitp.bsky.social today.

The semantic content of delusions often contains stuff of cultural relevance, because, unsurprisingly, clinical populations are also exposed to culture.

Some percentage of the population consistently reports that they are reincarnations of Jesus, that the CIA are monitoring us with subcutaneously injected spy drones, and that the moon landing is a hoax. Is it time to consider whether they’re onto something?

Is ChatGPT Conscious? Many users feel they’re talking to a real person. Scientists say it’s time to consider whether they’re onto something. By Jeff Wise, a science journalist and private pilot.

can’t fucking catch a breath

make it stop

I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

I’m co-organizing an “AI for Science: Algorithms to Atoms” social event during #NeurIPS2025 with Yann LeCun, Anima Anandkumar, Bill Dally, and Max Welling. If you want to talk about AI Scientist, World Models, the future of AI-driven discovery, come by on Dec 5 3:30pm PT!

luma.com/AI-for-Scien...

RIP to the farmer’s almanac. astrology for corn is dead.

I gave my grandmother who survived both world wars and owns an italian restaurant that definitely isn’t a front for something control over my style sheets

So glad the internet could share in my special moment.

I love it when boys come together online to celebrate the accomplishments of women. What an honor to have earned a PhD in 2025 and to receive such positive support from the online community.

Alternatively, according to this account, women’s norms of epistemic deference are innate, while men are essentially… poultry.

Welcome to the first lesson of your newly-required module in the ethical medical use of shovels. To begin, *knocks you out with a shovel*

except that if you are not a complete brainless idiot about it discovering novel cancer treatments could be an ideal use case…

I’m applying shovel-analytics to attempt to reverse-engineer shovel optimized use-cases.

Importantly, the guy has no idea how to dig a hole. First he claims not to have heard of “a hole.” Then he argues with you that hole-digging is unimportant. Then he wants you to dig holes for him on your knees with your bare hands.

And the guy, now waving his shovel dangerously close to your face, begins shouting, “Why are you anti-shovel! Shovels are the future! Resistance to shoveling is futile! I and all my friends own trillions in shovel equity! I’m performing surgery on everyone’s mom!”

Discourse surrounding “AI” these days often feels like a guy showing you his shovel and you say, “that’s a nice shovel” and he says “I am going to perform surgery on my mother with this shovel” and you say “Oh God please don’t that is not what a shovel is for.”

Sometimes I look around me and think: I don’t think any of us, not a one of us, has the right heuristics for when to cede epistemic authority in an information ecology such as this.

Antisemitism is a lot like Qanon child abuse conspiracies in that there’s this real and bad phenomenon and, parallel to that, what can only be described as a large scale mass psychosis about a mostly fictional version of the same phenomenon

Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable gr...

Don't be evil?

"Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officers..."

www.404media.co/google-has-c...