Joshua Loftus

Why would RFK Jr be obsessed with the narrative of decline? A Kennedy, preoccupied by the possibility that people used to be better in the past, but are now massively disappointing... hmm

A reminder, because it is almost that time of year: More children are killed by cars on Halloween than any other day of the year, by far. www.vox.com/future-perfe... If you're a parent, I hope you'll do what you can to keep kids safe. If you're driving on Saturday, PLEASE exercise extra caution.

But but but... just think of how well targeted the AI chatbot ads will be. Surely that's more important?

Wait what?! There was more than one episode??

The government has a formula that decides whether safety rules are worth passing. And that formula was rewritten to put a new price on your life: zero dollars. #PublicHealth #EPA #News #Trump #climatechange

Ah, well, nevertheless… we must all accept that it is the future

It’s just mono vs polytheism The sun alone or many heavenly bodies

Around ~70% of smokers say they want to quit, more than half try to quit at least once every year

Put me on record as < 2%

For me, getting older and going dad mode -> hack squat machine AMRAP

human: noun verbs subject claude: the subject, and the noun that verbs it

Did something happen to my algorithm on here or is there really a recent backlash against people being anti-AI? Seems there might be a major new polarization underway

Data project (AI-able) and exam (paper, no aids) score distribution on the undergraduate Development Economics course I have been teaching at Stockholm University, 2022-2026.

"Among sections of the same course, AI tutor access reduced final grades by 0.37 standard deviations and learning management system participation by 0.90 standard deviations. Participation declines ... were greater among first-generation students." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1598

salt sugar fat

Masculinity is all about needing to make money so fast that you keep losing your money

Intriguing!

Snort.

Car alarms should have been the most instantaneously banned invention in history. Sirens? Make them automatically quieter at slower emergency vehicle speeds. I want a war on noise pollution. I am a voter willing to make this one of my top issues

All my teaching this term, research still going, gotta do taxes, find a place to move in ~3 weeks, chasing 16 month old around trying to stop him from shoving every other child on the playground Now seems like the perfect time to start a new project. Maybe get into podcasting

Right, what could a distinguished professor of computational linguistics possibly understand or have to say about large language models? Journalists should only listen to people who work at companies selling the technology.

Conjecture: these are the first to be retracted because it's easier for an LLM reviewer to find a sign error. If humans ever bother to read all 719 remaining papers they will find other, deeper kinds of errors, nonsense, and lots more that may be true but is criminally awkward

This is also a strawman of what the Stochastic Parrot camp has been saying, but let’s not let good faith get in the way of a good social media dunk

When someone is killed by car: this is normal, expected, inevitable really When someone is killed by a bike: we must investigate this immediately

“AI” in education Is like a fire in a library

You’re laughing but this is something a hidden internal portion of all AI models has to relearn from first principles every time you ask them to “run” some code and it costs billions of dollars in wasted gpu cycles

Other people: ideologues Me: pure objectivity

My conspiracy theory for why the "AI" CEOs are suddenly all in agreement about slowing down is that they already expect model improvement to plateau and want to say it's voluntary rather than hitting hard technological/statistical limits

The illusion and politics of objectivity in cost-benefit analysis, a decision-making institution so ingrained that Americans can’t imagine life without it.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters… extremely cute monsters that culturally evolved to hijack our baby-preserving psychology

the future could be magnificent, and you deserve a share of it

This is a good explanation for why my toddler is able to say "dowwwwnnn" with so much feeling