Leonard Dung
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leonarddung.bsky.social
Leonard Dung
@leonarddung.bsky.social
Philosopher of cognition at the Ruhr-University Bochum. I work mainly on consciousness, AI, and animals.

https://sites.google.com/view/leonard-dung/home
Reposted by Leonard Dung
An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...
LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience
The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.
www.lse.ac.uk
March 25, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Two or more 2-year Postdoc / Research Scientist positions at NYU to work on issues tied to artificial consciousness. Strong research track record with expertise in AI expected. No teaching. Salary around $62K. Details and application materials are here philjobs.org/job/show/28878
Post-Doctoral Associate/Research Scientist, New York University - PhilJobs:JFP Post-Doctoral Associate/Research Scientist, New York University
An international database of jobs for philosophers
philjobs.org
March 16, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
The NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program is thrilled to be hosting an online panel with Heather Browning and Oscar Horta on March 19 at 12pm ET! This event will settle once and for all the question whether wild animal welfare is net positive or negative. RSVP below :)

sites.google.com/nyu.edu/wild...
Events
Spring 2025
sites.google.com
March 4, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Should we care more about shrimp?

www.slowboring.com/p/mailbag-mo...
February 28, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
I have a paper out in Philosophical Studies. It addresses a common (and old) objection to illusionism about phenomenal consciousness philpapers.org/rec/KAMDCA-2 1/x
François Kammerer, Defining consciousness and denying its existence. Sailing between Charybdis and Scylla - PhilPapers
Ulysses, the strong illusionist, sails towards the Strait of Definitions. On his left, Charybdis defines “phenomenal consciousness” in a loaded manner, which makes it a problematic entity from a physi...
philpapers.org
February 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Do large language models develop "emergent" models of the world? My latest Substack posts explore this claim and more generally the nature of "world models":

LLMs and World Models, Part 1: aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-w...

LLMs and World Models, Part 2: aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-w...
LLMs and World Models, Part 1
How do Large Language Models Make Sense of Their “Worlds”?
aiguide.substack.com
February 13, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
I can’t believe it - after years of advocacy, exclusionary zoning has ended in Cambridge.

We just passed the single most comprehensive rezoning in the US—legalizing multifamily housing up to 6 stories citywide in a Paris style

Here’s the details 🧵
February 11, 2025 at 1:46 AM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
This is one reason why I think manuscripts should contain a robustness checks section. This would make it normal for researchers to conduct additional analyses, and for reviewers to request additional analyses, that ask: if key analyses are done this other reasonable way, are the results different?
February 7, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Call for abstracts: Workshop “Evaluating Artificial Consciousness”:
eac-2025.sciencesconf.org
10-11 June 2025 at RUB Bochum
#PhilMind #consciousness #consci #sentience #Ethics #CogSci
Evaluating Artificial Consciousness 2025 - Sciencesconf.org
eac-2025.sciencesconf.org
January 17, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Cherish every day this thing isn't spreading from human to human.
he admitted the CDC’s report was “enough to raise my eyebrows.”
“It’s not great. It’s not great news,” Hensley told STAT.

BC teen
#H5N1 D1.1
3 conc muts as mix

Louisiana severe
#H5N1 D1.1
3 conc muts as mix

Shared E190D
also in A/Brevig_Mission/1/1918
www.statnews.com/2024/12/26/c...
CDC says H5N1 bird flu sample shows mutations that may help the virus bind to cells in the upper airways of people
The CDC said Thursday that the mutations, detected in a sample taken from a Louisiana patient, may help bind the virus to the upper airways in people.
www.statnews.com
December 27, 2024 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
Some of my thoughts on OpenAI's o3 and the ARC-AGI benchmark

aiguide.substack.com/p/did-openai...
Did OpenAI Just Solve Abstract Reasoning?
OpenAI’s o3 model aces the "Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus" — but what does it mean?
aiguide.substack.com
December 23, 2024 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
New work from my team at Anthropic in collaboration with Redwood Research. I think this is plausibly the most important AGI safety result of the year. Cross-posting the thread below:
December 18, 2024 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by Leonard Dung
New in print: "Let's Hope We're Not Living in a Simulation":

In Reality+, David Chalmers suggests that it wouldn't be too bad if we lived in a computer simulation. I argue on the contrary that if we live in a simulation, we ought to attach a significant conditional credence to 1/3
December 17, 2024 at 7:21 PM