Melanie Mitchell
@melaniemitchell.bsky.social
Professor, Santa Fe Institute. Research on AI, cognitive science, and complex systems.
Website: https://melaniemitchell.me
Substack: https://aiguide.substack.com/
Website: https://melaniemitchell.me
Substack: https://aiguide.substack.com/
2020s: AI "System Prompts" are lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "prompt engineers".
1980s: AI "Expert Systems" were lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "knowledge engineers".
1980s: AI "Expert Systems" were lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "knowledge engineers".
January 1, 2026 at 8:59 PM
2020s: AI "System Prompts" are lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "prompt engineers".
1980s: AI "Expert Systems" were lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "knowledge engineers".
1980s: AI "Expert Systems" were lengthy, carefully constructed sets of expert rules about a particular domain, created by "knowledge engineers".
From my holiday reading...
"She had outshone at puzzles and abstractions her entire life, and still she had not learned a single thing about how to live."
-- R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
I can't help finding metaphors for AI....
"She had outshone at puzzles and abstractions her entire life, and still she had not learned a single thing about how to live."
-- R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
I can't help finding metaphors for AI....
December 29, 2025 at 12:43 AM
From my holiday reading...
"She had outshone at puzzles and abstractions her entire life, and still she had not learned a single thing about how to live."
-- R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
I can't help finding metaphors for AI....
"She had outshone at puzzles and abstractions her entire life, and still she had not learned a single thing about how to live."
-- R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
I can't help finding metaphors for AI....
Reposted by Melanie Mitchell
This paper I have a conflict on since Mathias now works in my lab, but it is so beautiful, claiming that shape processing in humans is not done like modern neural nets, but instead uses a symbolic representation of a program to generate the shape.
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
December 21, 2025 at 3:41 PM
This paper I have a conflict on since Mathias now works in my lab, but it is so beautiful, claiming that shape processing in humans is not done like modern neural nets, but instead uses a symbolic representation of a program to generate the shape.
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Subscribed!
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science or neuroscience? Starting a substack (infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/why-isnt-m...) by writing down my thoughts on that question: as part of a first series of posts giving my current thoughts on the relation between these fields. 1/3
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science?
First post in a series on cognitive science and AI
infinitefaculty.substack.com
December 17, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Subscribed!
Thinking of all the colleagues and friends I have who are connected to Brown University. What a devastating day for Brown, and for all of us.
December 14, 2025 at 3:19 AM
Thinking of all the colleagues and friends I have who are connected to Brown University. What a devastating day for Brown, and for all of us.
Horrific news from my alma mater.
Breaking: Multiple people have been shot and a suspect is at large at Brown University, police said Saturday evening. Students remain under lockdown, and campus and city police are responding to the incident.
Read more here:
Read more here:
Suspect at large after multiple people shot around Brown University, police say
According to a campus alert, shots were reported at the Barus and Holley Engineering building, a popular place for students to study.
wapo.st
December 13, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Horrific news from my alma mater.
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
www.newyorker.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Reposted by Melanie Mitchell
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Lindsay Lab - Postdoc Position
Artificial neural networks applied to psychology, neuroscience, and climate change
lindsay-lab.github.io
December 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
In the realm of science, do we want AI to replace us or to complement/augment us? @togelius.bsky.social argues compellingly for the latter.
togelius.blogspot.com/2025/12/plea...
togelius.blogspot.com/2025/12/plea...
Please, don't automate science!
I was at an event on AI for science yesterday, a panel discussion here at NeurIPS. The panelists discussed how they plan to replace humans a...
togelius.blogspot.com
December 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
In the realm of science, do we want AI to replace us or to complement/augment us? @togelius.bsky.social argues compellingly for the latter.
togelius.blogspot.com/2025/12/plea...
togelius.blogspot.com/2025/12/plea...
Reposted by Melanie Mitchell
In a keynote at NeurIPS 2025, Melanie Mitchell argues that developmental and comparative psychologists have a lot to teach AI researchers about studying cognitive capabilities. https://spectrum.ieee.org/melanie-mitchell?share_id=9075652
December 4, 2025 at 11:31 PM
In a keynote at NeurIPS 2025, Melanie Mitchell argues that developmental and comparative psychologists have a lot to teach AI researchers about studying cognitive capabilities. https://spectrum.ieee.org/melanie-mitchell?share_id=9075652
"It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing....It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."
Tom Stoppard, on complexity theory, in Arcadia.
One of the world's best playwrights. RIP.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Tom Stoppard, on complexity theory, in Arcadia.
One of the world's best playwrights. RIP.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies at 88
Sir Tom won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the screenplay for Shakespeare In Love.
www.bbc.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:53 PM
"It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing....It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."
Tom Stoppard, on complexity theory, in Arcadia.
One of the world's best playwrights. RIP.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Tom Stoppard, on complexity theory, in Arcadia.
One of the world's best playwrights. RIP.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Goes immediately to the top of the "To Read" list ⬇️
It has been so so fun to think with some of my favorite scientists about what it means to understand!
What does it mean to understand language? We argue that the brain’s core language system is limited, and that *deeply* understanding language requires EXPORTING info to other brain regions.
w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757
1/n🧵👇
w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757
1/n🧵👇
November 26, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Goes immediately to the top of the "To Read" list ⬇️
Straight from the horse's mouth:
“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”
“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”
November 25, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Straight from the horse's mouth:
“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”
“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”
I'm looking forward to the upcoming "Journal of Adversarial Poetry"
November 20, 2025 at 9:52 PM
I'm looking forward to the upcoming "Journal of Adversarial Poetry"
Reposted by Melanie Mitchell
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."
There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
November 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."
There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
It's sad that AI conference reviewers use "incremental" as reason to reject a paper -- e.g., "the contribution of this paper is incremental; reject". Where do they think most progress in science comes from, and what eventually fuels big discoveries?
November 19, 2025 at 9:54 PM
It's sad that AI conference reviewers use "incremental" as reason to reject a paper -- e.g., "the contribution of this paper is incremental; reject". Where do they think most progress in science comes from, and what eventually fuels big discoveries?
Good article bringing a reality-check to the claim of an automonous AI cyber-attack.
arstechnica.com/security/202...
arstechnica.com/security/202...
Researchers question Anthropic claim that AI-assisted attack was 90% autonomous
The results of AI-assisted hacking aren’t as impressive as many might have us believe.
arstechnica.com
November 15, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Good article bringing a reality-check to the claim of an automonous AI cyber-attack.
arstechnica.com/security/202...
arstechnica.com/security/202...
November 11, 2025 at 10:51 PM
I just called my senators, leaving messages asking them not to vote for any deal to end the shutdown without a deal to extend ACA subsidies. It is shocking to me that they are about to cave without this.
Following up on this. This remains a ‘cave is minutes or hours away’ situation. If you want to impact how this plays out you need to contact senators literally now. I want to add additional points of context. What I’m relaying is what I’ve picked up from highly reliable sources.
Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.
November 9, 2025 at 11:13 PM
I just called my senators, leaving messages asking them not to vote for any deal to end the shutdown without a deal to extend ACA subsidies. It is shocking to me that they are about to cave without this.
Beautiful remembrance of Brian Cantwell Smith, from Faculty of Information, University of Toronto: ischool.utoronto.ca/news/obituar...
Obituary: Brian Cantwell Smith (1950 to 2025) - Faculty of Information
Former dean wove philosophy and computation into a lifelong inquiry into the human dimensions of intelligence, judgment, and meaning Born into a prominent Canadian family known for both its intellectu...
ischool.utoronto.ca
November 4, 2025 at 12:52 AM
Beautiful remembrance of Brian Cantwell Smith, from Faculty of Information, University of Toronto: ischool.utoronto.ca/news/obituar...
Or, much more likely, they are role-playing, based on their training data.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
AI models may be developing their own ‘survival drive’, researchers say
Like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, some AIs seem to resist being turned off and will even sabotage shutdown
www.theguardian.com
October 25, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Or, much more likely, they are role-playing, based on their training data.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
I'm so thrilled and honored to be selected for this award, and really grateful to @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org for their support of science communication.
www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel...
#scicomm
www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel...
#scicomm
www.nationalacademies.org
October 23, 2025 at 3:36 PM
I'm so thrilled and honored to be selected for this award, and really grateful to @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org for their support of science communication.
www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel...
#scicomm
www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel...
#scicomm
