I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

I think the irrational confidence in the capabilities of AI here is a secondary infuriation. It's the idea that we could somehow direct anything else to do X in a useful way without ever learning to do X ourselves. How would anyone apart from a PhD level physicist know what it made sense to ask for?

An Open Letter to Georgetown Students, In Response to Recent Announcements about "Generative AI" Image source: Bibliothèque nationale de France An Open Letter to Georgetown Students, In Response to Recent Announcements by the University about “Generative AI” Dear students, As you know, in …

Solidarity with Emily Tucker and her open letter to students. Tucker writes, "But the great thing is, you don’t have to go along with this, and I urge you not to. You can refuse to use the chatbot. You can tell your professors that you don’t want them to use it or to require you to use it."

Streaming services that have introduced ads forgot the lost art of making sure someone isn't mid sentence when you cut to one. Watch older TV and you can see they built it kn. Between that and the fact that most ad spots are incoherent AI slop it makes for rough viewing

WE ALL HAVE THE EXACT SAME GENETIC CODE THATS WHY SEX ACTUALLY WORKS

Some excellent new follows from this list, this snowflake is a skilled curator

oh cool we’re doing the Wire Mother experiment again, but on all of society

New! For robust research, center values, not technology, w/ @nerdpro.bsky.social zenodo.org/records/1894...

Our commentary on Futrell/Mahowald "How linguistics stopped worrying and learned to love the LMs”, forthcoming in BBS

don’t forget to destroy your clocks tonight, walk away from your mortgage, just start driving, you’re free

I have learned in my travels that it is currently basically impossible to get a VM of any kind on Azure anywhere in Europe. Ironically, I had to learn this through a tortured interaction with an actual person in customer service. Copilot seemed not to be aware it was eating the world

I like how social media enables scientists to actively dispel popular myths & misconceptions about our research. As an illustration, here’s my thread on why there’s no such thing as a “gene for language”... 🧪 1/9

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

Incandescent. One of the best pieces I've read about what university means to people and their communities - and what will happen to a city and people after one closes. The *Labour* government and Jaqui Smith in particular should be ashamed of themselves and shamed into doing something. Deplorable.

I found the key to be referencing activities and examples we actually covered in class or seminars (the latter were not recorded). A lot of "well written" drivel immediately revealed itself

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.

Well now I know what's on for movie night

A pie chart from a survey where the possible responses are red, green, turquoise, blue, pink, and yellow - and google has made red responses blue, green responses red, turquoise responses orange, blue responses, green, pink responses purlple, and yellow responses ALSO blue.

There's a lot of bad shit going on right now, but god help me, this automatically generated pie chart from google forms might be the proverbial straw for me

I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!

Qui i veri criminali stanno in divisa

Agnes Varda saying the world's in bad shape and I'm overwhelmed.

📽️

It’s a tremendous honour, really tremendous - to be presented with a ‘World No.1 University’ ranking from Oxford. Very smart people. The best. Everyone knows it. Nobody thought it could happen, but here we are. Absolutely incredible.

About the PhD: Audits and evaluation of AI systems — and the broader context that AI systems operate in — have become central to conceptualising, quantifying, measuring and understanding the operations, failures, limitations, underlying assumptions, and downstream societal implications of AI systems. Existing AI audit and evaluation efforts are fractured, done in a siloed and ad-hoc manner, and with little deliberation and reflection around conceptual rigour and methodological validity. This PhD is for a candidate that is passionate about exploring what a conceptually cogent, methodologically sound, and well-founded AI evaluation and safety research might look like. This requires grappling with questions such as: What does it mean to represent “ground truth” in proxies, synthetic data, or computational simulation? How do we reliably measure abstract and complex phenomena? What are the epistemological or methodological implications of quantification and measurement approaches we choose to employ? Particularly, what underlying presuppositions, values, or perspectives do they entail? How do we ensure the lived experiences of impacted communities play a critical role in the development and justification of measurement metrics and proxies? Through exploration of these questions, the candidate is expected to engage with core concepts in the philosophy of science, history of science, Black feminist epistemologies, and similar schools of thought to develop an in-depth understanding of existing practices with the aim of applying it to advance shared standards and best practice in AI evaluation. The candidate is expected to integrate empirical (for example, through analysis or evaluation of existing benchmarks) or practical (for example, by executing evaluation of AI systems) components into the overall work.

are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me

apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...

pls repost

a close up of a man wearing a plaid shirt and a sherpa jacket making a funny face . ALT: a close up of a man wearing a plaid shirt and a sherpa jacket making a funny face .

this and "help us to evaluate whether you think AI is useful or not" were a lot

This was a cowardly subtweet of this mess, dissected at length here: bsky.app/profile/mehr...

Corporation For Public Broadcasting Is Dissolved After 58 Years Of Service

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been dissolved, ending its 58 years as the primary funder for PBS, NPR and local TV and radio stations

I keep coming across this idea that AI can be used to generate research ideas..where did this come from? I know a lot of people who are burnt out and have trouble moving forward with or engaging with new ideas, but I have never met anyone who's like "welp I got to the end of ideas I guess"

Let's talk about generative AI, contaminated information, and rhubarb.

Once upon a time, Europe was at war.

Food was scarce, and the government of the quote-unquote United Kingdom looked for alternatives. 1/

Why is Trump always doing interviews on Air Force one looking like he just got caught by reporters wiggling out of the bathroom on an easyJet flight

New Leather-Bound Notebook To Really Unleash Area Woman's Creativity

New Leather-Bound Notebook To Really Unleash Area Woman's Creativity theonion.com/new-leather-bound-notebo...