Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ
@olivia.science
👁️ https://olivia.science 🍃 https://metatheory.space associate professor of computational cognitive science · she/they · cypriot/kıbrıslı/κυπραία · σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει
An IKEA instruction sheet titled “SLÖPPING, LLM chatbot” The front page shows the finished data centre, as well as a list of pieces: 50000 × 💻, 10⁹ × 🌲, 1 × 🕯️, 1 × 🔧 The back page shows the instructions: plug the 💻, light the 🕯️, burn the 🌲 with the 🕯️ to power the 💻
Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 7h agoSlöpping 🙃
About mechanistic thinking: « [I]n reducing humans to mere machines, the ["human brain as a computer"] metaphor laid the groundwork for eugenic thinking and eroded the capacity to judge clearly. » doi.org/10.1215/2834...
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 10h agoOnce you’ve conceded that there’s nothing magic about humans or “living beings” that makes them the only entities allowed to think, it’s really hard to figure out an intellectually honest dividing line where the entities that are exercising creativity and solving complex problems aren’t thinking
Precisely this—the power attributed to technology makes it incredibly useful for laundering responsibility
Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · yesterdayThe AI industry wants you to say "the AI just did that thing on its own!" Like, United Health's AI that's denying a shitload of claims with a 90% error rate? They wanted you to think it's just the AI.
Also this nonsense Still Pencil said about privileging biological brains as "thinking", when the difference between biological cognition and electronic processing isn't just a difference of magnitude but a difference in kind.
As our national myth goes, french peasants overthrew royalty because of corvée.
I adore you Leon, Egyptologist here, they were built by a largely volunteer force (corvée labor) of 25,000. The builders were very well fed, paid in bread and beer, and received excellent medical care. There was no slavery whatsoever, it is a common misconception.
leon@leyawn.bsky.social · 3mo agoum, so everyone cheering on egypt in the world cup realizes how the pyramids were built right? but i guess that's a conversation you're not ready to have
Of course it all matters because it undergirds the reasonableness of very unreasonable claims about the existential risk of ai; which distract from important economic and policy questions in the moment; like how wrecked pensions are gonna be when the bubble pops.
I don’t mean this to be cruel, but there’s just too much air being taken up by people with media or tech backgrounds who think their hot take on consciousness with LLMs is new, and lord it has all been done before and we’re past that. Christ, half the news cycle is yud refusing to read a book.
Plus LLMs contain human-in-the-loop so also does think because it's got thinking humans in real time or otherwise creating parts of or contributing to the so-called AI system
Joe Bak-Coleman@jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 8h agoFor whatever reason the fact that LLMs manifest their task completion with language has had folks wanting to jump the gun on a big thorny question of whether/when they “think” in the sense that we all have come to understand it. They may simply not need “think” to to complete complex tasks.
But in none of these cases do we need to invoke the human, often (but weirdly not always) inner monologue of thought. The stream of consciousness inside our heads that has had philosophers arguing for millennia about what it is, whether it’s unique to us, etc….
These problems can be remarkably complex relative to what we think of as human intelligence; classic example being slime molds and recreating efficient transit maps. Obviously this is before we get to eusocial insects and the complex clockwork of their societies. Simple rules, emergent function.
The same is true for c. elegans, bacterial clumps, dog vomit slime molds, dicty, etc… complex flexible problem solving is pretty ubiquitous in the natural world and we don’t ascribe anything like what people are trying to force onto chatbots merely by virtue of complex problem solving.
We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 10h agoOnce you’ve conceded that there’s nothing magic about humans or “living beings” that makes them the only entities allowed to think, it’s really hard to figure out an intellectually honest dividing line where the entities that are exercising creativity and solving complex problems aren’t thinking
Honoured to be mentioned by @felienne.bsky.social in her AI newsletter! Riffing off of her vitamin-C phrasing, I may start to refer to this type of work as vitamin-CC, or vitamin-C^2
Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · last wk."Using some of my own work, I set out to clear up a few relevant concepts from theoretical computer science and computational cognitive science that can help to build conceptual hygiene and immunity against hyped claims about “AI” capabilities." irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/09/12/c...
Indeed and leads to silly superficiality like credentialism as well as the boomerang destruction of expertise: > If degrees are meaningless because they do not reflect skills anymore, then academia is also damaged beyond repair; as well as society in general in our ability to have experts.
Why does cheating matter?
A personal anecdote and an appeal to junior colleagues.
olivia.science
This Point
ALT: This Point
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 2mo ago> Something seems to be lost on my peers today: it’s still easy to not use AI. [...] Eschewing AI is one thing that we can actually do to live out ethics that affirm values of human and environmental rights. It’s almost a gift! Just use a computer the same way you did three years ago!
I also like cogitating. Not as widely applicable as cognizing, but suits my research nicely cos it puts cognitive deliberation into one handy word.
Ohhh, they have Rules. They have Rituals. Priests in all but name. Donald Mackay, prof where I did my PhD, took me to a Baptist communion once. I smiled when the guy gave me the cup and it was like a shock wave with the sense that we were going to have to start again because this person misbehaved.
I would hope that's obvious, but yeah, good to underline, and indeed: > The claim that PISA measures knowledge and skills essential for the modern society or the future world is not based on any empirical evidence.
👀 We are doing some dangerous research ... we also have this one mu.social/profile/oliv...
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 10mo agoNew preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence" Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 11mo ago"Many scholars, including us, have highlighted the threat posed by techno-solutionism in education: Rather than expanding our intellectual horizons, these technologies undermine the very conditions that allow us to think for ourselves." 1/n www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...
Here is an interesting thread featuring experts who oppose Chalmers’ view on AI and consciousness. (I have a feeling that consciousness without 'cognition' is conceivable. A deeply 'unhappy' form of it, though.) bsky.app/profile/oliv...
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 2mo agoMany, and especially he, love to do that. So glad others see it too. More here from me on this including many more collected examples in the appendix: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
I like the annealing of theory and method, but “don’t have a useful theory” seems too strong for practice. “Crystalize“ supports a description that also limits usefulness. Theory imprints methods but methods bring in other material, historic and cognitive stuff that rarely reach understanding.
And this includes any all scientific uses of AI and indeed any computational system, weather prediction, cancer research, medical imaging, mathematics, please just don't claim it's fine if you don't research automation in those areas. I'll post further resources below...
Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · yesterdayBut speaking of staying in one's lane, can we PLEASE switch the default position from "It's fine to use 'AI' for this thing I'm not an expert in" to "Yeah, I'd be really skeptical of any use cases and need to see strong evidence that it's okay, but I'm not the one who can produce that evidence"?
