Michael Saxon

@saxon.me

To mine own opinions be true Research scientist @ Google Deepmind. Prev: postdoc @ UW, PhD UCSB, BSMS ASU Evals, metrics, multilinguality, multiculturality, multimodality, and (dabbling in) reasoning 100% Product of public schools https://saxon.me/

I’m saying this as a routine voluntary user of LLMs: constant questioning and re-evaluation of whether you are interacting with a human does real psychic damage.

"Claude, generate and post a promotional animation for my book about the space shuttle. Show the shuttle taking off from above"

Two years ago, my colleagues and I were sued by Stephen Miller's America First Legal. The Hines v Stamos case — built atop a number of false allegations — was a central element of the "censorship industrial complex" myth. Today, that case was dismissed (by a Trump judge in LA). We won.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
MONROE DIVISION
JILL HINES ET AL — CASE NO. 3:23-CV-00571
VERSUS — JUDGE TERRY A. DOUGHTY
ALEX STAMOS ET AL — MAG. JUDGE KAYLA D. MCCLUSKY
MEMORANDUM RULING
Before the Court is a Renewed Joint Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Subject Matter and Personal Jurisdiction [Doc. No. 191] filed by Defendants, Alex Stamos, Renée DiResta, the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, the Leland Stanford Junior University, Kate Starbird, Graphika, Camille François, the Atlantic Council, and Graham Brookie (collectively, "Defendants"). Plaintiffs, Jill Hines ("Hines") and Jim Hoft ("Hoft") (collectively, "Plaintiffs"), filed an Opposition [Doc. No. 207]. Defendants then filed a Reply [Doc. No. 209].
For the reasons set forth, Defendants' Motion is GRANTED.

The ban is an incredibly successful maneuver if the aim is ham up the drama surrounding supposed ‘snowballing capabilities’ without needing to demonstrate any actual advancement in performance.

there's actually being chill about your degree or credentials, which is of course totally cool and good, and then there's the whole meta-snobbery thing some people will do where they make a show of humbebragging about how little [prestigous credential] means to them, and I really hate the latter.

This was very obviously always the plan, and anyone who believed that Meta had any qualms about maximum privacy invasion is a rube. We must deploy rigorous mockery to fully socially ostracize anyone who attempts to wear these things. We have to go full Scoble on Meta glasses.

Andrew Couts@couts.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: A @wired.com analysis of Meta's app for its smart glasses found that the company has been adding code for face recognition since January, while saying that it is still "thinking through" whether to deploy it. @dmehro.bsky.social and @dell.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/meta-s...

Many have pointed out that the industry titans of yore used their wealth to build libraries, universities, while today's make megayachts and rockets Robber barons brought infrastructure and industrialization vs software and financialization Maybe they're connected? Builders build, buyers buy

Ethics reviewing is fun because pretty much all you have to do is remind reviewers that they did not give a legitimate reason to request an ethics review

Just watched the Michael Jackson movie. It was a bold creative decision to spend 30 minutes of runtime on a shot-for-shot remake of Captain Eo

Looking for an emergency reviewer for COLM on evaluating LMs for science/engineering. Do me a solid and I'll owe you a bite or beverage when next we meet

Is there a recognized dialectal distinction in american english for whether people pronounce the "s" in "housing" or "islam" as an /s/ or a /z/? I am a z user

Saw an interesting video claiming Dwarkesh Patel is an industry plant, to which I say duh? There is no way to have a tech podcast whose relevance revolves around getting CEOs etc to come on and NOT be an industry plant