Michiel van de Panne
@mvandepanne.bsky.social
UBC Computer Science; physics-based models of human movement; deep reinforcement learning; animation; robotics
Vancouverites: @leahstokes.bsky.social will be at #UBC 9/29 to talk about her new book, which is both an expert and personal account of passage of the US IRA. It's truly inspiring (despite Republican rollbacks) and we can all use some of that. Register here: ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
"It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power." - Tolkien, Letter 246
Teleop glass manipulation competition at the humanoid robot games. Agibot wins gold.
Microduck from Pollen/Huggingface: an accessible robot for RL for less than $400
In case you're not yet fully aware that there truly is a war on Canada, this offers a good summary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhS4...
Is Donald Trump at war with Canada?
YouTube video by Richard J Murphy
youtube.com
Introducing the #KostasVisualizations webpage, hosting my growing collection of interactive visualizations for #ComputerVision and #MachineLearning. Webpage: csprofkgd.github.io/kostas-visua...
Competitions like the World Humanoid Games in Beijing highlight a massive, robust robotics ecosystem, and an accelerating rate of deployment and development: itcanthink.substack.com/p/approachin...
Approaching Robotics Hardware Takeoff
And some thoughts on the World Humanoid Games
itcanthink.substack.com
They don't want you to know this, but this is peak running form
A personal essay about how I’ve been feeling and thinking about this new technology that I’m contributing to and what it might to do to us all. togelius.blogspot.com/2026/08/losi...
Losing my religion
In spring 2025 I had a crisis of faith. I thought about what the technology I'm helping to create might do to our future, and got scared. M...
togelius.blogspot.com
The whole world needs to stand up to this narcissistic bully and criminal, who literally doesn’t care that he’s imploding the US economy and dragging the global economy down with him. As a matter of fact, that may very well be his intent.
Toronto Star@thestar.com · last wk.Mark Carney suspends trade talks with U.S., says Canada will match new tariffs ‘dollar for dollar’
Walk away, @mark-carney.bsky.social . The tariffs are a mob-style shakedown, and Canadians understand this. Elbows up.
People dreamt that once all the information was online people would learn everything. They didn't want to do that, so we invented something that would.
Anthropic's CEO says AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Victorian bootmakers suggest a different possibility. A story about sewing machines, economics, and why history can help us think more clearly about AI. newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/what-victo...
What Bootmakers Can Teach Us About AI
Anthropic's CEO warns AI could erase half of entry-level jobs. Victorian England suggests a different possibility.
newsletter.platypuseconomics.com
Let’s make balcony solar happen in BC! @adriandix.bsky.social @davidebybc.bsky.social @bchydro.bsky.social Solar and hydro are nicely complementary.
Catherine McKenna@cathmckenna.bsky.social · 4w agoTime for Canada/provinces to make this possible here too. We should be allowed to have nice things that lower bills and emissions!
TIL that the AI bubble has its own Wikipedia page. Let's see where this goes. No moat, and obviously very useful but with no obvious path to strong ROI? (cf. low margin airline industry) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_bubble
AI bubble - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Fascinating experiment: current AI systems lack creativity to reliably pursue research arxiv.org/abs/2607.27191 - poor judgment about the bar for publishable research - uncreative responses in research design - ineffective backtracking from dead ends - poor resource awareness - instruction drift
Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies
Forecasts of explosive AI progress hinge on AI agents automating AI research. But evidence on whether agents can carry out open-ended AI research is thin. Current evaluations either test agents on nar...
arxiv.org
This is one of the most level-headed discussions of AI self-improvement that I’ve read — recommended!
Mark Riedl@markriedl.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew blog post: What to Expect When You Are Expecting Recursive Self Improvement mark-riedl.medium.com/what-to-expe...
So many thoughtful insights here. Strongly recommended!
Melanie Mitchell@melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 4w agoI'm just now reading @randomwalker.bsky.social's writeup of his ICML keynote. It is very insightful. Everyone thinking about the future of work in the age of AI should read this. www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
I'm just now reading @randomwalker.bsky.social's writeup of his ICML keynote. It is very insightful. Everyone thinking about the future of work in the age of AI should read this. www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...
What will be left for us to work on?
My keynote at ICML 2026
normaltech.ai
Court holds that Google cannot use DMCA to stop other companies from scraping their search results because search results are not copyrightable, they don't own the content they are serving up, and are not acting on behalf of those who might own the rights arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
“Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win
Google's and Reddit's use of DMCA to fight web scraper is bizarre, expert says.
arstechnica.com
Skipped SIGGRAPH this year due to its host country this year, along with a large number of other Canadians. It really needs alternate parallel host countries, much like a growing number of other conference.
I think it's reasonable to ask of a research program that purports to automate away all jobs that it provide a positive vision of the future more confident than "hey, maybe we'll "cure" cancer along the way"
Hard to overstate how angry Canadians are at Trump over these ridiculous tariffs. The United States has emitted the most carbon pollution in world history. It has caused these climate-driven wildfires. Oh and American air pollution routinely drifts into Canada. What utter bullshit.
If recent events with Kimi K3 have finally convinced you that you need to try and understand how the Chinese labs approach AI - and how it differs than the SF center of power - you should read my post from a few months ago: www.interconnects.ai/p/notes-from...
Notes from inside China's AI labs
Lessons from my trip to talk to most of the leading AI labs in China.
interconnects.ai
Fun fact for American politicians. Canada’s forests are the size of all these countries COMBINED: Portugal. France. Spain. Germany. Poland. UK. Sweden. Norway. Finland. Denmark. Italy. Greece. Netherlands. Switzerland. Austria. Belgium. Get out your rake.
