Last month Dawkins declared Claude conscious and was mocked. @garymarcus.bsky.social cleverly called it The Claude Delusion. My (and Nagel's?) take: Both are wrong for the same reason. Here's why the question of machine consciousness will never be settled scientifically. arxiv.org/abs/2606.00226

Consciousness, AI, and the Limits of Scientific Explanation

Science is constitutively third-personal: its findings are in principle reproducible by any observer, independent of perspective, and answerable to measurement. This is the source of its power and als...

arxiv.org

Every time you experience something new, your brain faces a decision: Should it update an existing memory or create a new one? In our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social #JNeurosci, we isolate that exact decision, moment-by-moment during learning 🧵

Are you a graduate student interested in working at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) this summer? LANL has student internships, apply here: lanl.jobs/search/jobde... Please apply ASAP and before February 13th (sorry for the rush) 1/2

Computing & Artificial Intelligence (CAI) Division Graduate Intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is Hiring! Search available jobs or submit your resume now by visiting this link. Please share with anyone you feel would be a great fit.

lanl.jobs

"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition". Intuitive cell types are found in random artificial networks using the same selection criteria neuroscientists use with actual data. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 1/2

Exciting "new" work illustrating our broken publishing system. Seb presented this work online at neuromatch 2.0 at the height of the pandemic. Then, Xin-Ya worked years on addressing reviewer comments, which added some rigor but didn't change the message. 1/2

Adaptive stretching of representations across brain regions and deep learning model layers - Nature Communications

How the brain adapts its representations to prioritize task-relevant information remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both monkey brains and deep learning models stretch neural representations...

nature.com

When AI surpasses human performance, what's left for humans? We find that human judgment boosts performance of human-AI teams because humans and machines make different errors. cell.com/patterns/ful... 1/2

Confidence-weighted integration of human and machine judgments for superior decision-making

When AI surpasses human performance, what can humans offer? We demonstrate that the performance of teams increases by integrating human judgments with those of machines. Integration is achieved by a s...

cell.com

Researchers are using LLMs to analyze the literature, brainstorm hypotheses, build models and interact with complex datasets. Hear from @mschrimpf.bsky.social, @neurokim.bsky.social, @jeremymagland.bsky.social, @profdata.bsky.social and others. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/machine-lear...

How neuroscientists are using AI

Eight researchers explain how they are using large language models to analyze the literature, brainstorm hypotheses and interact with complex datasets.

thetransmitter.org

Michael X Cohen on why he left academia/neuroscience. mikexcohen.substack.com/p/why-i-left...

Why I left academia and neuroscience

Don't worry, this isn't yet another story of rage-quitting.

mikexcohen.substack.com

Some UK dude is trying to extort me, demanding money to not spread made-up stories. I reported to the poilice after getting flooded with phone messages I never listen to, etc. @bsky.app has been good about deleting his posts and accounts. If contacted, don't interact, but instead report to...1/2

New blog w @ken-lxl.bsky.social, “Giving LLMs too much RoPE: A limit on Sutton’s Bitter Lesson”. The field has shifted from flexible data-driven position representations to fixed approaches following human intuitions. Here’s why and what it means for model performance bradlove.org/blog/positio...

Giving LLMs too much RoPE: A limit on Sutton’s Bitter Lesson — Bradley C. Love

Introduction Sutton’s Bitter Lesson (Sutton, 2019) argues that machine learning breakthroughs, like AlphaGo, BERT, and large-scale vision models, rely on general, computation-driven methods that prior...

bradlove.org

New blog, "Backwards Compatible: The Strange Math Behind Word Order in AI" w @ken-lxl.bsky.social It turns out the language learning problem is the same for any word order, but is that true in practice for large language models? paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.08739 BLOG: bradlove.org/blog/prob-ll...

"Probability Consistency in Large Language Models: Theoretical Foundations Meet Empirical Discrepancies" Oddly, we prove LLMs should be equivalent for any word ordering: forward, backward, scrambled. In practice, LLMs diverge from one another. Why? 1/2 arxiv.org/abs/2505.08739

Probability Consistency in Large Language Models: Theoretical Foundations Meet Empirical Discrepancies

Can autoregressive large language models (LLMs) learn consistent probability distributions when trained on sequences in different token orders? We prove formally that for any well-defined probability ...

arxiv.org

"Coordinating multiple mental faculties during learning" There's lots of good work in object recognition and learning, but how do we integrate the two? Here's a proposal and model that is more interactive than perception provides the inputs to cognition. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coordinating multiple mental faculties during learning - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Coordinating multiple mental faculties during learning

nature.com

Last year, we funded 250 authors and other contributors to attend #ICLR2024 in Vienna as part of this program. If you or your organization want to directly support contributors this year, please get in touch! Hope to see you in Singapore at #ICLR2025!

ICLR Conference@iclr-conf.bsky.social · 2y ago

Financial Assistance applications are now open! If you face financial barriers to attending ICLR 2025, we encourage you to apply. The program offers prepay and reimbursement options. Applications are due March 2nd with decisions announced March 9th. iclr.cc/Conferences/...

Thanks @hossenfelder.bsky.social for covering our recent paper, doi.org/10.1038/s415... Also, I want to spotlight this excellent podcast (19 minutes long) with Nicky Cartridge covering how AI will impact science and healthcare in the coming years, touchneurology.com/podcast/brai...

Sabine Hossenfelder@hossenfelder.bsky.social · 2y ago

Large Language Models were remarkably accurate in predicting results of studies that they’ve never read before. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgrl...

"Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results" w @ken-lxl.bsky.social and braingpt.org. LLMs integrate a noisy yet interrelated scientific literature to forecast outcomes. nature.com/articles/s41... 1/8

"Beyond Human-Like Processing: Large Language Models Perform Equivalently on Forward and Backward Scientific Text" Our take is that large language models (LLMs) are neither stochastic parrots nor faithful models of human language processing. arxiv.org/abs/2411.11061 1/2

Has anyone tried this tool to follow back all of one's followers? github.com/jiftechnify/... It seems legit but I'm weary of giving a password to a third party website. So many people here so suddenly!

I fully support the last sentence of this abstract from @profdata.bsky.social : elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... "...the complexity of the brain should be respected and intuitive notions of cell type, which can be misleading and arise in any complex network, should be relegated to history." 🧠📈 🧪

🚨Submissions for #CCN2024 are now open at ccneuro.org 🚨 We welcome submissions for 2-page papers (deadline: 12 April) and Generative Adversarial Collaborations (GACs), Keynote+Tutorials, and (new this year!) Community Events (deadline: 5 April). Stay tuned: registration will open in early April!

Here's a recent talk I gave on the braingpt.org project, touching on findings from here, arxiv.org/abs/2403.03230. The video is sectioned for those wishing to skip the bits on explanatory vs. predictive approaches. youtu.be/sDt4-Q_jz7g?...

"Taming the neuroscience literature with explanatory and predictive models" (BrainGPT) - YouTube

Chapters:0:00 Introduction3:30 Process models (theoretical, explanatory)16:18 Models as tools (BrainGPT, predictive)39:03 ConclusionsModels can help scienti...

youtu.be

📢 ERC-funded PhD in our team 📢. Curious about the mechanisms underlying learning and perception? Wish to study them via modelling and neuroimaging? This may be for you! Email me qus. Please circulate 🙏 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...   #HiSciSky #neuroskyence #PsySciSky

Cognitive Neuroscience PhD at UCL at University College London on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Cognitive Neuroscience PhD at UCL at University College London, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

"Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results" w @ken-lxl.bsky.social and braingpt.org. LLMs integrate a noisy yet interrelated scientific literature to forecast outcomes. arxiv.org/abs/2403.03230 1/6

Large language models surpass human experts in predicting...

Scientific discoveries often hinge on synthesizing decades of research, a task that potentially outstrips human information processing capacities. Large language models (LLMs) offer a solution....

arxiv.org

Why do universities ignore good ideas? mindmatters.ai/2024/03/why-...

Why Do Universities Ignore Good Ideas?

Here is a recent assessment of 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Katalin Kariko: Another article claims that this occurred because she could not get the financial support to continue her research.

mindmatters.ai

#CitAI_seminars: On Thu, March 21 at 16:00 GTM, Bradley C. Love @profdata.bsky.social  will deliver a talk on  "Taming the neuroscience literature with explanatory and predictive models"  More information:   cit-ai.net/seminars.html If you wish to Zoom in, email the organisers or @emp1.bsky.social

Are you interested in getting your science journalism career started? The Transmitter is seeking a summer intern to cover the fast-moving field of neuroscience. Find out more and apply for the role here: simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simons...

"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition" w Ken Luo @robmok.bsky.social Whether place, border, head direction, Jennifer Aniston, or whatever cells, are we fooling ourselves? Are these intuitive findings scientific discoveries? 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

@quantamagazine.bsky.social made a really cool video about our study and other cool research done this year! www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt6B...

2023's Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience

A look back at some of the highlights of biology coverage in Quanta Magazine during 2023, including important research progress into the nature of consciousn...

youtube.com

Now published in Ann Rev Psych, just in time for Christmas! I lay out a framework for bridging between neuroscientific work on (subpersonal) confidence and a psychology of personal-level metacognition www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Join us!

Artificial Intelligence Research Centre, CitAI.@citai.bsky.social · 3y ago

We are seeking a computer scientist specialising in deep learning models for sequential and image analysis. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DEW239/l...