Rick Searle
@ricksearle.bsky.social
Writer and Educator
Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology, Blogs @ https://utopiaordystopia.com/ @RickSearle@universeodon.com
Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology, Blogs @ https://utopiaordystopia.com/ @RickSearle@universeodon.com
Reposted by Rick Searle
This is rather wonderful (written up by the ever reliable Mark Buchanan). We can imagine making quantum clocks that arefully reversible and generate no entropy. But the entropic cost of extracting a classical tick is, in relative terms, huge.
physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
physics.aps.org
November 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM
This is rather wonderful (written up by the ever reliable Mark Buchanan). We can imagine making quantum clocks that arefully reversible and generate no entropy. But the entropic cost of extracting a classical tick is, in relative terms, huge.
physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
Reposted by Rick Searle
AI has introduced a lot of new moves into the game tree and defied a lot of conventional wisdom, but overall the families of strategies have only changed incrementally post-AlphaGo.
September 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
AI has introduced a lot of new moves into the game tree and defied a lot of conventional wisdom, but overall the families of strategies have only changed incrementally post-AlphaGo.
Reposted by Rick Searle
In short, it seems like centuries of collective, cumulative innovation has done pretty well, all things considered. Humans can't play as good as AI but AI seem to have rediscovered much of the human strategic repertoire.
September 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
In short, it seems like centuries of collective, cumulative innovation has done pretty well, all things considered. Humans can't play as good as AI but AI seem to have rediscovered much of the human strategic repertoire.
"But a few short months ago, the United States believed that it could use its chokehold on advanced semiconductors to create a grand global scheme for controlling the development of AI...The technological bets...look to be going bad."
www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-twilig...
www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-twilig...
The twilight of tech unilateralism
Suddenly, America is in a whole different world
www.programmablemutter.com
August 20, 2025 at 9:06 PM
"But a few short months ago, the United States believed that it could use its chokehold on advanced semiconductors to create a grand global scheme for controlling the development of AI...The technological bets...look to be going bad."
www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-twilig...
www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-twilig...
Reposted by Rick Searle
This whole thing reads like a civilisation that is daring itself to go over the brink ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
Inside the relentless race for AI capacity
The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed
ig.ft.com
July 31, 2025 at 9:17 AM
This whole thing reads like a civilisation that is daring itself to go over the brink ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
Reposted by Rick Searle
a lot of rage against Boomers is a kind of subconscious recognition that the period from ~1950-1990 is the basis of a shared popular culture is nothing is coming to replace it
One thing that's striking about Ozzy Osborne's death is how difficult it is to imagine the music industry producing another figure like him. The barriers to working class people are so great, and there's a related attitude to culture that is neutered as a result.
July 23, 2025 at 9:20 AM
a lot of rage against Boomers is a kind of subconscious recognition that the period from ~1950-1990 is the basis of a shared popular culture is nothing is coming to replace it
Reposted by Rick Searle
LLMs
1) Are better than their haters claim
2) Are much worse than their acolytes claim
kinda that simple
1) Are better than their haters claim
2) Are much worse than their acolytes claim
kinda that simple
July 21, 2025 at 5:18 PM
LLMs
1) Are better than their haters claim
2) Are much worse than their acolytes claim
kinda that simple
1) Are better than their haters claim
2) Are much worse than their acolytes claim
kinda that simple
Reposted by Rick Searle
Instead of trying to find a mode of information processing that can only be done in protein/water colloids, we'd be better advised to take comfort in the things people *can't* do — like be edited or copied. We can have legal personhood because we're non-fungible that way.
June 16, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Instead of trying to find a mode of information processing that can only be done in protein/water colloids, we'd be better advised to take comfort in the things people *can't* do — like be edited or copied. We can have legal personhood because we're non-fungible that way.
Reposted by Rick Searle
this user has correctly divined how a LLM works: you imagine that you are talking to a person but you are actually talking to an abstract representation of the collective efforts of everybody involved in moving the pointer
At some level, user error has to be factored into these stories about problems with LLMs
June 13, 2025 at 4:43 PM
this user has correctly divined how a LLM works: you imagine that you are talking to a person but you are actually talking to an abstract representation of the collective efforts of everybody involved in moving the pointer
Reposted by Rick Searle
I should say though that this is a pretty good article, explaining why the right way to develop AI is as a domain-specific tool.
June 17, 2025 at 4:13 PM
I should say though that this is a pretty good article, explaining why the right way to develop AI is as a domain-specific tool.
Reposted by Rick Searle
Reposted by Rick Searle
Here is my review of two new books looking at different but ultimately overlapping aspects of the utopias and dystopias of the libertarian far right. Adam Becker delves into the fantastical techno-utopias of Silicon Valley, while...
www.the-tls.co.uk/science-tech...
www.the-tls.co.uk/science-tech...
Techno dystopia, libertarian hell
Imagine a future in which humans succeed in colonizing other planetary systems. It is then easy to imagine an intergalactic human population numbering something huge beyond imagining – 1040, say – all...
www.the-tls.co.uk
June 5, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Here is my review of two new books looking at different but ultimately overlapping aspects of the utopias and dystopias of the libertarian far right. Adam Becker delves into the fantastical techno-utopias of Silicon Valley, while...
www.the-tls.co.uk/science-tech...
www.the-tls.co.uk/science-tech...
Reposted by Rick Searle
Nature presents us with 80 "octaves" of light, of which humans can see exactly 1.
Bringing the other 79 octaves into view has taken two centuries of effort, but it has transformed our ability to sense our place in the cosmic order. My new Aeon essay: 🧪🔭
aeon.co/essays/willi...
Bringing the other 79 octaves into view has taken two centuries of effort, but it has transformed our ability to sense our place in the cosmic order. My new Aeon essay: 🧪🔭
aeon.co/essays/willi...
June 1, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Nature presents us with 80 "octaves" of light, of which humans can see exactly 1.
Bringing the other 79 octaves into view has taken two centuries of effort, but it has transformed our ability to sense our place in the cosmic order. My new Aeon essay: 🧪🔭
aeon.co/essays/willi...
Bringing the other 79 octaves into view has taken two centuries of effort, but it has transformed our ability to sense our place in the cosmic order. My new Aeon essay: 🧪🔭
aeon.co/essays/willi...
Reposted by Rick Searle
James Murray's book on Mathematical Biology has a nice chapter on the "Use and abuse of fractals in biology" which I enjoyed immensely. I think this terminology "use and abuse" can apply to many powerful (but limited!) human tools such as metaphors, power laws, stylistic models, etc.
May 26, 2025 at 4:56 PM
James Murray's book on Mathematical Biology has a nice chapter on the "Use and abuse of fractals in biology" which I enjoyed immensely. I think this terminology "use and abuse" can apply to many powerful (but limited!) human tools such as metaphors, power laws, stylistic models, etc.
Reposted by Rick Searle
I've said this before, but the problem is that the acceptable rate of wrong answers depends *heavily* on the task in question.
Counterintuitively, the simpler and less important the task, the *lower* the acceptable failure rate!
Counterintuitively, the simpler and less important the task, the *lower* the acceptable failure rate!
Bluesky lives in a fantasy world were LLMs are useless plagiarism machines. When the reality is they generally work. Just not well enough for the way the masses are using them. Most people can’t handle something that is sometimes wrong.
I encounter more and more people in real life lately who think AI genuinely is some kind of truth machine and it feels like they are living on a different planet in a way that is just incredibly distressing
May 20, 2025 at 5:35 PM
I've said this before, but the problem is that the acceptable rate of wrong answers depends *heavily* on the task in question.
Counterintuitively, the simpler and less important the task, the *lower* the acceptable failure rate!
Counterintuitively, the simpler and less important the task, the *lower* the acceptable failure rate!
Reposted by Rick Searle
I have a couple of benchmark papers and it is very hard to elicit the correct identification of a problem when these models assume a lot of good faith in legit science papers. When parts of the paper have extra sound methodology, Claude will additionally amplify confidence and rigor of the paper.
That was zero-shot, and it did not do web research.
However, if you just ask o3 to critique or provide comments on the paper (as opposed to looking for issues/errors), it provides really solid methodological critiques but it assumes good faith and does not flag the paper as potentially fraudulent.
However, if you just ask o3 to critique or provide comments on the paper (as opposed to looking for issues/errors), it provides really solid methodological critiques but it assumes good faith and does not flag the paper as potentially fraudulent.
May 17, 2025 at 4:54 PM
I have a couple of benchmark papers and it is very hard to elicit the correct identification of a problem when these models assume a lot of good faith in legit science papers. When parts of the paper have extra sound methodology, Claude will additionally amplify confidence and rigor of the paper.
Reposted by Rick Searle
You can think LLMs are aren’t intelligent, are built in exploitative ways, aren’t useful, overhyped, but if you don’t think they’re a wildly interesting scientific artifact I don’t know what to tell you
May 17, 2025 at 2:40 PM
You can think LLMs are aren’t intelligent, are built in exploitative ways, aren’t useful, overhyped, but if you don’t think they’re a wildly interesting scientific artifact I don’t know what to tell you
Reposted by Rick Searle
Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,
Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man
With charming.
phys.org/news/2025-05...
Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man
With charming.
phys.org/news/2025-05...
ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider
In a paper published in Physical Review C, the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
phys.org
May 10, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,
Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man
With charming.
phys.org/news/2025-05...
Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man
With charming.
phys.org/news/2025-05...
Reposted by Rick Searle
imagine an ant which lives on a map of your hometown. there are many things which you know about your hometown which that ant can never learn. but it is not the case that the ant living on that map knows nothing about your hometown.
Large language models make me think of cargo cults. The belief is that by creating strings of words that superficially look like those created by intelligence, intelligence will later magically appear
Or, in Chomsky terms, it's the belief that by aping surface structure, deep structure will appear
Or, in Chomsky terms, it's the belief that by aping surface structure, deep structure will appear
May 10, 2025 at 3:45 PM
imagine an ant which lives on a map of your hometown. there are many things which you know about your hometown which that ant can never learn. but it is not the case that the ant living on that map knows nothing about your hometown.
Reposted by Rick Searle
Artillery centric war in Europe, navies of the world battling piracy in the Middle East, trade wars raging, a mad ruler attempts to claim the papacy, disruptive new technologies threaten societal stability…we’re 1800s maxxing
May 3, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Artillery centric war in Europe, navies of the world battling piracy in the Middle East, trade wars raging, a mad ruler attempts to claim the papacy, disruptive new technologies threaten societal stability…we’re 1800s maxxing
Reposted by Rick Searle
Hard to overstate how the recent rhetoric of imperial derangement in the face of heightened trade rivalry mirrors that of the 80s… (cc @jwmason.bsky.social)
April 30, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Hard to overstate how the recent rhetoric of imperial derangement in the face of heightened trade rivalry mirrors that of the 80s… (cc @jwmason.bsky.social)
Reposted by Rick Searle
Among everything novel in my environment (ie because of new technology) that I was exposed to while my brain was still developing, I think about the impact of this:
Even as a child, I knew that staring up at the night sky was looking *out* into space, at uncountable suns, and deep into the past.
Even as a child, I knew that staring up at the night sky was looking *out* into space, at uncountable suns, and deep into the past.
This is a new image from #JWST.
The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way.
Everything else is a galaxy.
Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.
The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way.
Everything else is a galaxy.
Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.
April 29, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Among everything novel in my environment (ie because of new technology) that I was exposed to while my brain was still developing, I think about the impact of this:
Even as a child, I knew that staring up at the night sky was looking *out* into space, at uncountable suns, and deep into the past.
Even as a child, I knew that staring up at the night sky was looking *out* into space, at uncountable suns, and deep into the past.