📣Avec des collègues enseignant.e.s, des parents, et des spécialistes de l'éducation nous lançons une pétition sur le site de l'AN pour que les revendications de la jeunesse soient reprises par les parlementaires. Vous connaissez le chemin ✒️ petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/...

Not everyone seems to realize that the origin of the machine view of life is not scientific at all. It dates from the 17th century (Descartes) and it's the expression of a monotheist view opposing pagan views of nature. A living being is like a perfect machine made by God, not an autonomous being.

As it turns out, democracy might not just be the occasional possibility of voting. Who could have known!

#ESR #VeilleESR Une synthèse sur ce que veut dire "Parcoursup": le protocole d'affectation, la sélection introduite par la loi ORE, la réforme Blanquer du BAC (spécialités, contrôle continu), et la loi Pénicaud de financement massif du privé prédateur par l'argent public. lundi.am/Faire-sauter...

1/2 🎇 Good news! 🎇 The kind people at Behavioral and Brain Science have made the new collection on "Conscious AI and biological naturalism" #OpenAccess for a limited time: target article, all 50 commentaries, & my response. Go to the link and click 'save pdf': doi.org/10.1017/S014.... Do share!

Le cerveau est un organe à la fois fascinant et complexe. Il n’est pas toujours aisé de comprendre son fonctionnement. Alors... on se laisse happer par des explications séduisantes et intuitives qui sont en réalité fausses - ce sont les neuromythes. Sommes-nous accros aux mythes sur le cerveau ? 🧠

Sommes-nous accros aux mythes sur le cerveau ?

Dopamine détox, cerveau masculin ou féminin, cerveau droit ou gauche, les neuromythes ont la cote dans nos librairies. Quels discours politiques se cachent derrière ces fausses idées sur le cerveau ? ...

radiofrance.fr

Neuro arnaque sort aujourd'hui chez Textuel. On nous explique les crise écologiques par le striatum, l'inégalité scolaire par les gènes, les préférences genrées par l'évolution... La neurobiologie réelle raconte une tout autre histoire. www.editionstextuel.com/livre/neuro_...

Avant la manif, pensez à écrire à vos député·es. On a 48h pour les alerter - au moment de l'examen du Projet de Loi de Finances. J'ai écrit et envoyé ça:

One reason (among many) to study protists: as a toolbox, nature is unbeatable

Florent Waltz@florentwaltz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Huge congratulations to all three Nobel Laureates, and especially Peter Hegemann! 👏 His seminal work on the green alga Chlamydomonas 🦠 laid the foundation for optogenetics. Thank you for putting Chlamy in the spotlight! ✨ Proof that groundbreaking discoveries don't always come from animal models! 🔬

In that post, I pointed out that an LLM does not understand language because LLMs are trained on form, not meaning. There's a paper by @emilymbender.bsky.social and @akoller.bsky.social that makes this point in detail. From 2020, but still accurate. aclanthology.org/2020.acl-mai...

Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data

Emily M. Bender, Alexander Koller. Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2020.

aclanthology.org

Romain Brette@romainbrette.bsky.social · 3mo ago

On the existential risks of artificial intelligence romainbrette.fr/on-the-exist...

Great conversation with @tommyblanchard.bsky.social at "Cognitive Wonderland": cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/the-brain-...

The Brain, in Theory

Does the brain compute? A conversation with Romain Brette

cognitivewonderland.substack.com

#VeilleESR #ESR Le premier rapport des Assises pour l'Université et pour la Recherche propose à la représentation nationale un plan de redressement budgétaire pour l'Université, la Recherche et la Vie Etudiante. A télécharger ici: raw.githubusercontent.com/cpesr/assise...

I think there are two key lessons from Linguistics as we deal with LLMs/chatbots being imposed on us everywhere. Grateful for Undark Magazine giving space for me to lay these out: undark.org/2026/09/25/i...

Interview: What Does the 'I' in AI Really Mean?

Five scientific experts discuss whether artificial intelligence is — or might one day become — truly intelligent.

undark.org

++ Linking the unity of consciousness to the unity of metabolism Also, @anilseth.bsky.social makes an error by relating thermodynamic free energy to informational free energy (not a physical quantity). An organism imports (not minimizes) free energy in order to survive. The opposite basically.

Kate Nave@kathrynnave.eurosky.social · last mo.

Excellent survey of the variety of views on artificial consciousness My contribution draws on the importance of unity for conscious experience & suggests this depends on the metabolic unity of an organism: leaflet.pub/p/did:plc:ct... Thanks to @anilseth.bsky.social for such a rich target article!

We are looking forward to tomorrow, on September 23rd, 2026 at 10h30 for the presentation of the book The Brain in Theory and the Q&A with Romain Brette at the Institute Pasteur. Here it's the link to follow the event online and be part of the Q&A. www.crowdcast.io/c/brain-in-t...

Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette

Register now for Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette on crowdcast, scheduled to go live on July 22, 2026, 04:00 PM GMT+2.

crowdcast.io

New preprint! “Active control of surface immobilization in the foraging behavior of Paramecium”. More about the elementary cognition of these little critters! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Six principles for supporting academic freedom in universities. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Six principles for supporting academic freedom in universities

Many academics are concerned about threats to independent enquiry in higher education. Here’s how it can be protected while taking legitimate concerns into account.

nature.com

Excellent article dans Le Monde sur mes bestioles favorites.

Le Monde@lemonde.fr · last mo.

Plongée dans le monde fascinant de micro-organismes unicellulaires doués d’intelligence

We thank Ferney Manrique for his interesting presentation about chapters 4 and 9. Today's video recording: www.crowdcast.io/c/brain-in-t... This is the last session of the reading group and next week we will have the book presentation at the Institute Pasteur on September 23 at 10:30 CET.

Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette

Register now for Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette on crowdcast, scheduled to go live on July 22, 2026, 04:00 PM GMT+2.

crowdcast.io

I have been yelling since 2021 about how using synthetic text extruding machines for information access is a TERRIBLE IDEA. And yet and yet and yet: they are marketing so heavily that way that people keep falling for it. edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...

Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics

The episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war

edition.cnn.com

Letting kids play with the red button is dangerous. But it's not because kids are so much smarter than adults. The point is not to prevent AI to get "too smart", but to have strict barriers in place. An LLM did not figure out how to send requests over internet: an engineer implemented the feature.

Time to repost this: "On the existential risks of artificial intelligence" romainbrette.fr/on-the-exist...

On the existential risks of artificial intelligence

The impressive progresses in machine learning have revived the fear that humans might eventually be wiped out or enslaved by artificial superintelligences. This is hardly a new fear. For example, t…

romainbrette.fr

It's not impossible that AI could present catastrophic risk if we do something deeply dumb like put it in charge of nuclear arsenals or enable rogue agents to use it for bioweapons design. Neither requires "superintelligence".

@romainbrette.bsky.social is on the Converging Dialogues podcast to discuss his new book, The Brain, In Theory with host @xavierbonilla.bsky.social: buff.ly/PIcn3vB

#505 - The Brain Is Not A Machine: A Dialogue with Romain Brette

Listen now | In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Romain Brette about the brain and various theoretical concepts in neuroscience.

convergingdialogues.substack.com

Some sense in the "rogue agents" debacle. Anthropomorphic metaphors of machines are misleading, just like machine metaphors of the brain are misleading.

Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · last mo.

I wrote down my thoughts about the last several weeks of AI hell. aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...

For the next session, we will have Raoul Doyez from Sorbonne Université presenting Chapter 8 and a brief recap of Chapter 5: www.crowdcast.io/c/brain-in-t... The topics are neural codes and the organization of brain processes. Join us on September 9th, 2026 at 16h CET. @romainbrette.bsky.social

Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette

Register now for Reading club: The Brain in Theory by Romain Brette on crowdcast, scheduled to go live on July 22, 2026, 04:00 PM GMT+2.

crowdcast.io

Hey @ericlipton.nytimes.com 👋 AI is not “evolving” on its own. *People* are choosing how to build it. *People* are choosing how to train it. *People* are choosing how to run it. Maybe the problem is that they are the *wrong people* to make these choices.

Eric Lipton NYT@ericlipton.nytimes.com · 2mo ago

OpenAI’s top scientist, in a blog post on Sunday, warns that artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly that it is becoming increasingly difficult for humans to understand and control it. Here is the post: openai.com/index/an-ali... And a couple of small excerpts--clear warnings.

The superposition of these two studies — both incredible — reflect a snapshot of "one big thing" systems neuroscience has yet to resolve. In mice: 1. Task-related signals are everywhere. 2. Absent large swaths of "everywhere," suprisingly sophisticated learning & behavior remains.

A presentation by Farid Zahnoun of my chapter on anticipation (from The Brain, in Theory).

Julio Alcántara@julioalcante.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We thanked everybody for your assistance and Farid for his interesting presentation of Chapter 7. The recording of the session is the following: www.crowdcast.io/c/brain-in-t... @romainbrette.bsky.social @r3rt0.bsky.social @k4tj4.bsky.social

Ma contribution aux assises pour l'Université et pour la Recherche (3-4/9/2026), concernant le financement de la recherche. romainbrette.fr/pour-un-fina...

Pour un financement collégial, non bureaucratique de la recherche

Ce texte est ma courte contribution aux assises pour l’Université et pour la Recherche (3-4/9/2026), concernant le financement de la recherche. La recherche repose sur deux principes indissoc…

romainbrette.fr