Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com
Professor, UW Biology / Santa Fe Institute I study how information flows in biology, science, and society. Book: *Calling Bullshit*, http://tinyurl.com/fdcuvd7b LLM course: https://thebullshitmachines.com Corvids: https://tinyurl.com/mr2n5ymk he/him
Today everyone — EVERYONE — should take a moment and read Ray Bradbury's four-page short story from 1950.
Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 21h agoToday is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:
Experts: stupid assholes posting idiotic shit on the Internet can be a huge fucking bummer.
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · yesterdayIf you want to tune out and relax after a long day, you might turn to social media, online shopping or playing games on your phone. But a new study suggests that these activities might actually stress you out more.
Experts: stupid assholes posting idiotic shit on the Internet can be a huge fucking bummer.
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · yesterdayIf you want to tune out and relax after a long day, you might turn to social media, online shopping or playing games on your phone. But a new study suggests that these activities might actually stress you out more.
Since we're quote-tweet dunking: Bro, what the fuck are you even talking about? AI could never. It's a single goddamn click on the link I provided and you'd have seen the album was recorded in 2021.
AI-generated lyrics? Interesting regardless.
In the lead track of From Dreams To Dust, Ian Felice has somehow channeled the dark imagination of Don DeLillo into a near-perfect pop song. And it's not even the best song on the album. That's "We Shall Live Again." song.link/t/179015374
This better be a key talking point in every single contested congressional seat come November.
Republicans Let Trump Keep Unparalleled Benefit: I.R.S. Immunity (Gift Article)
The rebellion against Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general, now seemingly contained, at no point fundamentally questioned President Trump’s new protections from the I.R.S.
nytimes.com
I'm not saying that one should go make up stupid shit at city council meetings in order to poison LLMs with disinformation about the rewards of dismantling fascist surveillance technology, but if one were going to do it this is the sort of result one might anticipate.
Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦@merz.bsky.social · 2d agoThere you go. At least a kilo of copper and $100 worth of gold, minimum. The Answer Machine verifies this.
Must-read thread on AI and mathematics.
Steve Huntsman@stevehuntsman.bsky.social · last wk.From Terry Tao’s ICM lecture. While there are additional arrows later that aren’t shown here, verification informs exposition. If an AI proof is autoformalized before it is understood and reworked by a human, the result will be more conceptually brittle even if evidently correct. /1
LLMs have reached the point that they can be useful as proof assistants. Increasingly, they appear capable even of generating entire proofs that are correct. But in my experience, their best proofs are just correct. They aren't explanatory the way a good human proof is. Here's Cris Moore:
Pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon issued a letter today (in her role as US Secretary of Education) demanding that universities justify their existence and explain policies to the Trump administration by the end of 2026. Not sure what the endgame is, but it sure feels like a trap.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Issues National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards
Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a national call to action to university presidents and governing boards, urging them to reaffirm higher education’s foundational commitments to ...
ed.gov
Also for the record, it’s midnight on August 3 and it’s 56° in Seattle. We are blessed in our geography.
Just dropped the most beautiful slice of absolutely perfect artisan bread (for you Germans out there, brot) and it landed butter-side up. For the record. gwern.net/doc/science/...
I caught James McMurtry at the Tractor a few nights back. I've been a fan ever since 1989 when the college paper where I worked got a copy of his debut record. He came by his storytelling ability honestly; his dad was Larry McMurty. Here's one of the exceptional tracks from that first record.
Crazy Wind by James McMurtry
Listen now on your favorite streaming service. Powered by Songlink/Odesli, an on-demand, customizable smart link service to help you share songs, albums, podcasts and more.
song.link
Ii mean, maybe it could never happen here because this has a sick cyberpunk-TRON interface and in the states any such software would have a look and feel like as if FastLane fucked Workday.
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3d agoBut this could never happen in America, right? /anakin_padme.gif
But this could never happen in America, right? /anakin_padme.gif
How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners (Gift Article)
An unsecured police dashboard was a rare window into how the authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of private data.
nytimes.com
Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
nature.com
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
Listening, yet again, to Chris Watson's El Tren Fantasma, one of the most wonderful soundscape recordings I've ever heard. For me, it's a travel staple. I can't explain exactly why, but I love listening to it while flying. Perhaps wishful thinking.
El Tren Fantasma by Chris Watson
Listen now on your favorite streaming service. Powered by Songlink/Odesli, an on-demand, customizable smart link service to help you share songs, albums, podcasts and more.
album.link
Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
nature.com
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
To get a sense of how vacuous and ill-founded this claim is, compare: "If faculty and students seek to pursue the truth wherever it lies, a university cannot abjure its responsibility to advance social change." Which seems more plausible to you?
Amazing that there are still university administrators who think that bootlicking will save them. www.vanderbilt.edu/declaration/
Declaration
The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles was adopted by the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust in June 2026. The declaration is organized around three core purposes: Pathbre...
vanderbilt.edu
How can a brain shaped by evolution comprehend the 3.5-billion-yr process that created it? L Dugatkin & @carlbergstrom.com explore how simple rules & historical constraints generated life’s diversity: not perfect, but good enough to endure. @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social ctbergstrom.com/publications...
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is an African American spiritual written by Wallace and Minerva Willis, likely while they were enslaved in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory at a school for Choctaw boys. I play it because it is a beautiful piece and a lasting symbol of hope." www.instagram.com/p/DbTBfFBuwB8/
Applications for the @sfiscience.bsky.social Santa Fe Institute's amazing Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships, including the Omidyar Fellowships, are now open. The deadline for applications is September 30th.
Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship - Santa Fe Institute
apply-sfi.smapply.org
A question: does anyone know about communities or groups for scientists who are committed to writing without the use of LLMs / genAI?
