FWIW, here are Terence Tao’s slides at the ICM on maths and AI: teorth.github.io/tao-web/slid... @teorth.bsky.social (I am not endorsing nor criticizing the content, but this is a useful and thoughtful set of points and views in the discussion, from someone who has deeply engaged with the matter)
hello everyone, I made this helpful meme to explain how to read scientific papers
This afternoon at #SIGGRAPH2026! I'll be speaking about the human vision in how people draw pictures; excited to see the other speakers!
@yaelvinker.bsky.social · 2mo agoSIGGRAPH 2026 is just around the corner! Planning to attend? Join us for Lines & Minds: Visual Abstraction in Art, Psychology, and Computer Graphics 🎨🧠🫖 We’ll explore how visual abstraction shapes how we think, create, and communicate. 🔗 lines-and-minds.github.io 📅 Sunday, July 19
This is very good...
Arvind Narayanan@randomwalker.bsky.social · 3w agoI had the honor of giving a keynote at the International Conference on Machine Learning last week. I addressed the widespread anxiety about how we should adapt as AI capabilities increase. I was thrilled by the talk’s reception, so I have made my slides available www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/tal...
Storytelling is, first and foremost, about people, and AI in fiction are typically modified people, not genuine explorations of a scientific concept. Viewers can identify with Data as a smart-but-naive nerd, with Terminator (in T2) as an emotionally-closed-off father figure, etc.
Andres Guadamuz@technollama.bsky.social · 3w agoWhy does AI in science fiction so often miss the mark? A few days ago there was an interesting post by Andrew Curran that got a lot of responses which was discussing why AI in science fiction often does not have the capabilities that AI already has in reality. I thoroughly agree with that take,…
For years, I've heard from my fellow computer scientists that "the brain is a computer" or "we can simulate brains in a computer." I think both are wrong, and, now that we're hearing them from corporate tech leaders too, it's no longer just an academic topic. 🧵 aaronhertzmann.com/2026/07/13/b...
The Brain Is Not Just A Computer, and Cannot Be Simulated by One
Digital computers perform fixed logical operations on clock cycles; brains are biological systems of staggering complexity.
aaronhertzmann.com
1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.
Generalization as the great leap in evolvability: insights from machine learning
Abstract. Natural selection encodes learned information in the genome. Learned solutions may be tuned specifically to past challenges, failing in altered e
academic.oup.com
On the last day of SIGGRAPH this year, we will hold a new technical workshop called "From Human Vision to Machine Vision", with talks ranging from low-level human visual perception, to applied perception, art & photography, and to machine vision. #SIGGRAPH For more info, see: fromhv2mv.github.io
having “The Talk” with my kid (What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Nagel, 1974)
I haven’t yet finished reading this review, but it already lead me to reading Rosa Cao’s 2022 paper on “multiple realizability” today and it’s my new favorite paper on computational functionalism. Might post most about the key points
Raphaël Millière@raphaelmilliere.com · 2mo agoNow published in open access! Your one-stop shop for the philosophy of language models. It's the spiritual descendant of our two-part preprint from 2024, fully updated. This should be particularly useful for anyone looking for an entry point into this rapidly growing field.
SIGGRAPH 2026 is just around the corner! Planning to attend? Join us for Lines & Minds: Visual Abstraction in Art, Psychology, and Computer Graphics 🎨🧠🫖 We’ll explore how visual abstraction shapes how we think, create, and communicate. 🔗 lines-and-minds.github.io 📅 Sunday, July 19
This is fascinating work but also I love these happy little circle guys
Flavio Martinelli@flavioh.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis is based on very general theorems by Fukumizu&Amari,2000, then extended to deep nets by Petzka&Sminchisescu,2019
This piece brilliantly explains why it's not only unnecessary to take seriously the idea that LLMs are conscious, in some cases it is ethically irresponsible.
Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 2mo agoIt's always a treat to read Ted Chiang's thoughts on AI. www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
An excellent thoughtful and clear review of the state of AI. yalereview.org/article/mela...
Melanie Mitchell: The Dangerous Unknowns at the Heart of LLMs
Melanie Mitchell probes the jagged landscape of AI and its uncertain future.
yalereview.org
New blog post pointing out some interesting observations about sketching and how it relates to theories of visual perception. In short, I don't think there's a good account for how scribbly art is recognized (or if there is I don't know it). 1/ aaronhertzmann.com/2026/06/01/s...
Scribbling, abstract art, and visual recognition
Sometimes when I sketch quickly, I feel like I’m scribbling some random squiggles, and, yet, recognizable shapes of my subjects emerge:
aaronhertzmann.com
I enjoyed my second #VSS2026 a few weeks ago. I found the session on peer review fascinating, especially the way an editor argued strongly against double-blind review using strawman arguments. Basically “optional blind review doesn’t fully solve all bias, so there’s no point to blind reviewing.”
A blog post where I answer the question "prove to me that you are conscious", which AI enthusiasts sometimes use to make AI conscious seems just as plausible as human consciousness. 1/ aaronhertzmann.com/2026/05/20/c...
People and Animals are Conscious
“AI” enthusiasts arguing for “AI” consciousness say: prove to me that you are conscious. Of course, one cannot prove this. So this is taken as some kind of “gotcha,” proof of an unfair double standard...
aaronhertzmann.com
For #VSS2026 attendees: I've posted some of my iPad sketches from the conference on the Discord (in "#chatroom") and here: www.instagram.com/aaronhertzma... A few samples here:
New blog post on dog intelligence, based on my experiences with my own dog and volunteering at a shelter. We often describe dog behaviors in terms of knowledge: “She knows that if she sits, she gets a treat.” “He knows his name" etc. But I think dogs don't have knowledge, they have behaviors. 1/
Dogs Do Not Know Things
When you spend time with a dog, you have some ideas about what’s going on in its head. You get a sense of its moods, whether it is happy or tired or afraid. Taking care of a dog, or training it requir...
aaronhertzmann.com
The Nobel prize in trolling goes to .... somebody who showed a picture of real Monet, pretended it is AI generated (and prompted to imitate Claude Monet), and asked people how they knew it is inferior. People gave detailed descriptions of how its style is wrong and bad. Priceless.
SE Gyges@segyges.bsky.social · 3mo agothere are 500 replies and they are basically all like this
Our position paper, "AI Welfare Is Bullshit" just got accepted to ICML 2026 @icmlconf.bsky.social! The AI welfare agenda has already begun to attract institutional investment at organizations such an @anthropic.com. We argue that this idea is essentially Frankfurtian Bullshit.
My next #LDNCreativeAI meetup is on 13th May with 🖼️ @aaronhertzmann.com @adobe.com on Per-Fixation Perspective in Art and Photography ♟️Vivek Veeriah GoogleDeepMind on Generating Creative Chess Puzzles 🎥 Gabriela Tropia on AI, film and digital necromancy Sign up: luma.com/gx7c3x0i #creativeAI
Writing forces your brain to coordinate memory, reasoning, and meaning-making simultaneously. Every time you write, you rewire toward clearer thinking. Every time you let an LLM do it, you rewire toward consumption.
Our internship project earned an Emmy adobe.ly/4rO38ik
Adobe takes home an Emmy for pioneering work in VR editing tools
Adobe Researchers have been honored with a Technology and Engineering Emmy for their groundbreaking work on virtual reality (VR) editing tools. The Emmy celebrates Adobe’s “significant contributions to the development of 360-degree consumer video capture, editing, and presentation technologies.”
adobe.ly
If asked to draw a person's portrait, many people would say “I cannot draw.” Why is observational drawing so hard? In a new paper, @judithfan.bsky.social and I answer: it's the limitations of human vision. Learning to draw is learning skills to overcome them. aaronhertzmann.com/2026/03/23/d... 1/
Why Drawing is Hard: Visual Limitations and the Skills to Overcome Them
If asked to draw a picture of a tree or a person in front of them, many people would say “I cannot draw.” Thirty years ago, two psychologists pointed out that this should be surprising. They reasoned ...
aaronhertzmann.com
If navigation apps like Google Maps were invented today, they would be called "AI" and hyped as "AI agents." It's truly amazing how well they work, and now everyone completely takes them for granted, and many people completely outsource the mental task of navigation to them.
