A typically perceptive and clear piece from Ted Chiang

Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It's always a treat to read Ted Chiang's thoughts on AI. www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"basic cognitive processes underlying explanatory reasoning give rise to a systematic inherence bias among practicing scientists—a tendency to explain phenomena in terms of their inherent properties rather than external factors" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

alignmentalignment.ai

❤️

Bonan Zhao (赵博囡)@bonan.bsky.social · 12mo ago

My Lab at the University of Edinburgh🇬🇧 has funded PhD positions for this cycle! We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate. It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations. Spread the words!

Just out in Cognitive Psychology Lossy encoding of distributions in judgment under uncertainty By @tadegquillien.bsky.social , me & Chris Lucas www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We find people's 'best guesses' sneakily encode distribution information that guesser & others can reconstruct later

Lossy encoding of distributions in judgment under uncertainty

People often make judgments about uncertain facts and events, for example ‘Germany will win the world cup’. Judgment under uncertainty is often studie…

sciencedirect.com

We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇 ⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social

I'm very excited to share notes on Probabilistic AI that I have been writing with @arkrause.bsky.social 🥳 arxiv.org/pdf/2502.05244 These notes aim to give a graduate-level introduction to probabilistic ML + sequential decision-making. I'm super glad to be able to share them with all of you now!

New book "Explanation in Biology" with Cambridge University Press is out & open access! Covers (1) causal explanation & (2) non-causal/mathematical explanation in life sciences--bio, neuro, etc 🌿🧬🧠 Introduction to philosophical work on scientific explanation! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

New paper in #ProcB with @alexmesoudi.com, @jfbonnefon.bsky.social, @rmcelreath.bsky.social and Rob Boyd. We investigate how social learning shapes the way we explore and show that it can even preserve useless theories! 🧵👇

Our paper on if you can incentivize rule induction in humans with money is finally out (answer is: it appears to be a very weak/0-ish effect in contrast to the huge effect of financial incentives on rote, repetitive tasks). credit to pamop, ben newell & dan bartels psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

New preprint with @neilbramley.bsky.social and Chris Lucas: We argue that causal judgments are supported by richer mental representations than traditionally assumed, and that this hypothesis can help solve some puzzles about causation. osf.io/preprints/ps...

We're on the lookout for passionate minds to join us as reviewers for #CogSci2025. This is your chance to be among the first to check out groundbreaking research while playing a crucial role in shaping the future of #CogSci Visit cognitivesciencesociety.org/submissions/ and fill out the form!

CogSci2025 poster has landed, in both “wow the future looks bright for CogSci” mode, and also “our theories will make you think and possibly write poetry mode”. @neilbramley.bsky.social @carenwalker.bsky.social @cogscisociety.bsky.social

"Local search and the evolution of world models" (psyarxiv.com/e9p8k/). New paper forthcoming in TopiCS with Bonan Zhao, Tadeg Quillien & Chris Lucas