Much discussion about AI risks focuses on the dangers increasingly advanced AI systems pose to us. But what about the dangers we might pose to them? Many people think discussing "AI welfare" is absurd. I disagree! Discussion with Henry Shevlin and Rob Long here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMf...
Join us in #Brighton in May for a Long Table experimental public forum on AI and the arts at #BrightonFestival! Artists, academics, and the public digest what AI means for the arts today.
brightonfestival.org/whats-on/Xhn...
Our paper just hit 50 citations 🎯: "Political conspiracy theories as tools for mobilization and signaling", Current Opinion in Psychology, 2022, with @m-b-petersen.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Interesting piece here, citing among other folk the excellent @danwphilosophy.bsky.social
With Henry Shevlin, we discuss:
- How we became interested in philosophy and AI
- Recent advances in agentic AI
- AI, politics (e.g., Anthropic vs Trump administration), and public hostility to AI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEJG...
Thank you for the platform! I don't like the phrase 'money can't buy x' (for any x), it's just too vague and not true when taking literally. It was great to juxtapose the ideas abt wellbeing @markfabian.bsky.social and I have been developing with those of @lfitouchi.bsky.social and moral psychology.
It's largely an article of faith among center-left people that LLMs will lead to more disinformation and falsehoods, however, as @danwphilosophy.bsky.social argues, there are key ways that LLMs facilitate public beliefs in expert consensuses.
This is why Elon Musk is so upset about "woke AI."
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social has the best framing I've seen of what LLMs do to public opinion—anti-social media, technocratizing, epistemically converging. I'm (mostly) with him. But "epistemically converging" is the load-bearing claim, so, some thoughts...
kylesaunders.substack.com/p/expert-lev...
is it safe to come back here or will any view sympathetic to AI be met with rude/aggro replies
"Social media democratised public opinion, shifting influence away from elites and experts to ordinary people. LLMs will partly reverse this trend. They are a powerful, new technocratising force" @danwphilosophy.bsky.social
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-ai-wil...
This week, we talk to @pdurkee.bsky.social about status and personality.
youtu.be/JdkKYiLfWog
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-ax9c2...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
Poster for the call. All relevant information is in thread
1/6
Excited to share the call for posters & registration for the 2nd XSCAPE Workshop: "Varieties of Externalism" !
📅 Friday, April 10th, 2026 — Gallery Room, Bramber House, University of Sussex
Registration is free but places are limited. 🧵
Really enjoyed this conversation 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Henry Shevlin and I chat with @anilseth.bsky.social about his scientific and philosophical case against conscious AI: youtu.be/wVYg8u5xjno?...
Looking forward to reading this!
In today's newsletter:
According to the Doomsday Clock, we've been dancing on the edge of doom since 1947. That doesn't make sense.
If there isn't any disaster year after year, you have to infer the risk was lower than you thought.
1/5
www.update.news/p/the-doomsd...
Links in next post (2/2)
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l5T...
- Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/53bomYF...
- Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
- Rss feed: api.substack.com/feed/podcast...
- Transcript and links: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/ai-session...
Henry Shevlin and I discuss "misinformation", propaganda, mass gullibility, advertising, social media, and deepfakes with the great Sacha Altay (@sachaltay.bsky.social). www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l5T...
Well, my New Year's resolution is to read less (seriously). But made it through lots of great books this year, including several from fields I'm less familiar with. Here are 10 books I gave 5 stars to this year along with an excerpt (usually belief-related; I have a type) from each
Yeah, imho, not enough Darwinian cynicism among those who lean heavily on cognitive/complexity (vs. strategic/motivational) accounts. But that would take a hard self-reflective reckoning with A Big Misunderstanding:
www.everythingisbullshit.blog/p/a-big-misu...
What is "AGI"? How do we measure progress towards it? Does the concept even make sense? What would a post-AGI world look like? Had a lot of fun debating these and other questions with Henry Shevlin: youtu.be/SXj1UsGJGmY?...
Time to look back at my 2025 research. I published a bunch of empirical and philosophic papers (links below) but perhaps my favorite is this one. Kind of a précis for my forthcoming book. Below the other articles somewhat ranked according to how much I like them.
‘By democratising the public sphere, #socialmedia provides a platform for brilliant, heterodox thinkers who would never have achieved prominence through more traditional #media routes.’, schrijft @danwphilosophy.bsky.social. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/is-social-...
Opposing the far right isn’t an excuse to indulge our tribal instincts (literally half my posting on this site, but better stated by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social)
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/tribalism-...
A very interesting data-rich analysis of persuasion on digital media by @benmtappin.bsky.social. Recommend!
open.substack.com/pub/benmtapp...
I recently chatted with Henry Shevlin and Rose Guinrich about the psychology, social science, politics, philosophy, and ethics of human-AI "relationships". www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkqu...
Chatted with Henry Shevlin recently about why AI is a powerful tool for education that is nevertheless presenting big problems for our educational institutions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o_l...
"the prevailing negativity is a result of the particular way the discipline is institutionally organized... the overall picture of AI offered by the AI ethics community is one-sided & negatively biased... the ‘nuclear option’ would be to deliberately shrink the field of AI ethics, for its own sake"
🥳🥳
Thrilled to have been awarded funding by @acceleratescience.bsky.social @c2d3.cam.ac.uk
to develop an AI tool for interpreting dementia profiles from large-scale population modelling of neuroimaging data
Big thanks to @raibethlehem.bsky.social and to the Accelerate-C2D3 team for all the support!