www.amacad.org/publication/... my new article in the American academy of arts and sciences journal Daedalus. Part of a special issue in AI+Science lead by James Manyika.

New Year’s resolution: more personal coding projects this year. Just finished pretraining and instruction fine tuning my own GPT2 scale LLM from scratch in PyTorch. Was so much fun!

Our new paper "High-capacity associative memory in a quantum-optical spin glass." Achieves 7-fold increased capacity thru a quantum optical analog of short term plasticity from neuroscience. Atoms (neurons) couple to motion and photons (synapses)! arxiv.org/abs/2509.12202

In this Stanford news article, @stanfordhai.bsky.social Senior Fellow @suryaganguli.bsky.social argues that universities are essential for understanding how AI works. Here, he outlines three reasons why: news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

Three reasons why universities are crucial for understanding AI

There is a “fierce urgency” to understand how artificial intelligence works, says Stanford physicist Surya Ganguli, who is leading a project to bring the inner workings of AI to light through transpar...

news.stanford.edu

Led by @stanford.edu's @suryaganguli.bsky.social, our Simons Collaboration on the Physics of Learning & Neural Computation will study AI's fundamental scientific principles: www.simonsfoundation.org/simons-foundation-launches-collaboration-on-the-physics-of-learning-and-neural-computation/ #science

Simons Foundation Launches Collaboration on the Physics of Learning and Neural Computation

Simons Foundation Launches Collaboration on the Physics of Learning and Neural Computation on Simons Foundation

simonsfoundation.org

A nice starter pack of researchers in the @simonsfoundation.org Collaboration on the Global Brain go.bsky.app/66dLpPs

Open faculty position! We're seeking applicants for a tenure-track faculty position at the junior level (Assistant or untenured Associate Professor) with research programs that exist at the interface between molecular science and computation. Apply here: stanford.io/45MF3Qa

Very excited to lead this new @simonsfoundation.org collaboration on the physics of learning and neural computation to develop powerful tools from physics, math, CS, stats, neuro and more to elucidate the scientific principles underlying AI. See our website for more: www.physicsoflearning.org

Stanford HAI@stanfordhai.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Congratulations to HAI Senior Fellow @suryaganguli.bsky.social on leading the new @simonsfoundation.org Collaboration on the Physics of Learning and Neural Computation! The collaboration will study the fundamental scientific principles underlying AI. www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/18/s...

Under Trump, NOAA ran the most recent competition for their highly prestigious postdoc program in climate and global change — but funded no one, wasting huge amounts of applicant and reviewer time. It gets a lot worse. Now current postdocs in the program are going unpaid.

Recipients of a U.S. Climate Science Fellowship Are Put on Unpaid Leave

nytimes.com

A great @quantamagazine.bsky.social article on our theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models lead by @masonkamb.bsky.social See also our paper with new results in version 2: arxiv.org/abs/2412.20292 to be presented as an oral at @icmlconf.bsky.social #icml25

An analytic theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models

We obtain an analytic, interpretable and predictive theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models. Indeed, score-matching diffusion models can generate highly original images that lie far fro...

arxiv.org

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · last yr.

A new paper shows that the “creativity” of certain AI may actually be a direct, inevitable consequence of how they are built. Webb Wright reports: www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Honored to have had my recent work with @suryaganguli.bsky.social on the mechanisms behind creativity in diffusion models featured in this lovely article by Webb Wright for Quanta magazine!

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · last yr.

A new paper shows that the “creativity” of certain AI may actually be a direct, inevitable consequence of how they are built. Webb Wright reports: www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Wow - Bengali political ad in the US! I believe this is a first. খুব ভালো

Zohran Kwame Mamdani@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · last yr.

আর অবশ্যই — আমাদের প্রিয় সিটি কাউন্সিল সদস্য, জেলা ৩৯-এর শাহানা হানিফ-কে আবারও নির্বাচিত করুন। And of course — re-elect our beloved City Council Member from District 39, Shahana Hanif. চলুন একসাথে ভোট দিই — এক হাসি-খুশি নিউ ইয়র্ক-এর জন্য। Let’s vote together — for a hashi khushi New York. 🇧🇩🗽

The best part of this job is seeing students graduate and launch their careers! Congrats to Feng Chen, Atsushi Yamamura, Tamra Nebabu, Linnie Wharton and Daniel Kunin. They are all going on to top positions across artificial intelligence, medicine, and physics. Proud of you!

Had fun presenting at @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social on Theories of rapid learning, creativity, and reasoning: of mice and machines. Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmK... Papers: Learning: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Creativity: arxiv.org/abs/2412.20292 Math Reasoning: arxiv.org/abs/2502.07154

Theories of Learning, Imagination and Reasoning: of Mice and Machines with Surya Ganguli

YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

youtube.com

Kempner Institute at Harvard University@kempnerinstitute.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW: @suryaganguli.bsky.social of @stanford.edu presenting computational insights into the neural basis of learning, reasoning and imagination. Watch the talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmK... #NeuroAI2025 #neuroscience #ML #NeuroAI

Next was an fascinating talk by @suryaganguli.bsky.social on theories of learning, with some incredible experiments with mice at the @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmK... (5/18)

Theories of Learning, Imagination and Reasoning: of Mice and Machines with Surya Ganguli

YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

youtube.com

Surya Ganguli of @stanford.edu‬ offers computational insights into the working of grid cells in entorhinal cortex. @suryaganguli.bsky.social‬ #NeuroAI2025 #neuroscience

"Senior officials at the US Department of Veterans Affairs have ordered that VA physicians and scientists not publish in medical journals or speak with the public without first seeking clearance from political appointees of Donald Trump, the Guardian has learned."

Exclusive: US veterans agency orders scientists not to publish in journals without clearance

Move that seeks political control of doctors’ and scientists’ published research fits a pattern of censorship by the Trump administration, veterans advocates say

theguardian.com

OPT is the program that allows foreign students graduating with STEM degrees stay and work for up to three years. Because of the oversubscribed H-1B lottery, OPT is one of the main ways that foreign students manage to transition to jobs in the US. Ending it would destroy a major STEM pipeline.

Michael Clemens@mclem.org · last yr.

They're terminating OPT. Today the nominee to head USCIS stated directly: he will end Optional Practical Training, the single largest channel for high-skill immigrants to work in the US. 6 weeks ago I warned about this & summarized the research on impacts of this drastic action—> @piie.com

Many recent posts on free energy. Here is a summary from my class “Statistical mechanics of learning and computation” on the many relations between free energy, KL divergence, large deviation theory, entropy, Boltzmann distribution, cumulants, Legendre duality, saddle points, fluctuation-response…

Researchers who have had grants terminated--tell your story! The #DefendResearch team is collecting testimonials about this impact of #censorship on research that we will use as part of a toolkit for contacting elected officials. #NSF, #NEH, #NIH www.defendresearch.org/testimonials

Testimonials

In support of protecting free and open scientific inquiry and publication, we are collecting short testimonials from researchers on the impact of censorship on their work and the broader community. T...

defendresearch.org

I signed. Please consider signing.

If you are a faculty member at a US university, please consider signing this excellent petition asking our presidents, chancellors, etc to work together to defend our institutions from the direct attacks by Trump administration: sites.google.com/view/we-must...

This might be the most useful thing I have come across in social media - a personalized feed of academic papers filtered by your follower network! Highly recommend. #academicsky

Nikhil Garg@nkgarg.bsky.social · last yr.

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

So nice to be surrounded by >12000 physicists at @apsphysics.bsky.social summit working hard to understand the nature of our universe and build better tech like solar cells and novel quantum materials. Important to remind the public that our living standards depend on this research.

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

Love this post @michaelnielsen.bsky.social! I may be biased by I like the 2008 version 4 years before where the song is in my native Bengali by the Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfK... A translation of the song can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iiwp...

Where the Hell is Matt? 2008

YouTube video by Where the Hell is Matt?

youtube.com

Michael Nielsen@michaelnielsen.bsky.social · last yr.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwe-...

This is a super clear and helpful article explaining why the 15% indirect cost rate is unfair, hurts science, and does NOT increase $ for research: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Is flat 15% fair?

An NIH funding policy is misguided and damaging

science.org

This letter appeared in the Bloomsburg PA Press Enterprise this morning. I am assured the writer is who he purports to be, an Air Force veteran.

At the DC #standupforscience today. The question was “Why are you here?” She came up with this on her own! (I helped her with the spelling) So proud of her! #standupforscience2025 @standupforscience.bsky.social

My talk on “Neuroscience and AI: a symbiosis” @SimonsInstitute I start with a whirlwind history of metaphors for intelligence, spanning Hippocratic hydraulics, Hobbesian clocks, Cartesian dualism to Turing, telegraphs, Hopfield, and deep learning. simons.berkeley.edu/talks/surya-...

Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing@simonsinstitute.bsky.social · last yr.

"For the first time, we can...get performant neural networks that mimic complex human & animal cognition," said @suryaganguli.bsky.social speaking on the symbiosis of AI & neuroscience at the Simons Institute. "That's remarkable and exciting. Caveats...to follow" simons.berkeley.edu/talks/surya-...

I just wrote a book about how the type of work @markhisted.org is doing is key to breaking through the bottlenecks holding back new treatments for brain and mental disorders (from Alzheimers to depression). Seeing his work in danger makes me ill, and angry. We must @standupforscience.bsky.social.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last yr.

Compelling pushback from @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) regarding termination of tenure-track investigators driven by DOGE. 1/2