Dr. Steve Phelps
@sphelps.net
Scientist and CTO applying behavioural economics to AI Safety.
https://sphelps.substack.com/
https://sphelps.net/
https://www.lesswrong.com/users/phelps-sg
https://sphelps.substack.com/
https://sphelps.net/
https://www.lesswrong.com/users/phelps-sg
What do blockchains and brains have in common? Both juggle the trade-off between many local processes and one coherent global story. 🧠✨🧪
substack.com/profile/1616...
substack.com/profile/1616...
Steve Phelps (@sphelps)
One way I think about Dennett style approaches to explaining consciousness is in terms of distributed systems. For example, the mind has to maintain a consistent and robust world model even when mult...
substack.com
September 2, 2025 at 10:36 AM
What do blockchains and brains have in common? Both juggle the trade-off between many local processes and one coherent global story. 🧠✨🧪
substack.com/profile/1616...
substack.com/profile/1616...
Are LLM’s sentient? Should we consider their welfare? Is A.I. going to become conscious any time soon? Probably not. But these questions are trickier than they might seem at first glance. 🧪
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
Consciousness
Human, animal, and artificial sentience
open.substack.com
September 2, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Are LLM’s sentient? Should we consider their welfare? Is A.I. going to become conscious any time soon? Probably not. But these questions are trickier than they might seem at first glance. 🧪
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
This post explores how economic tools, such as staking, slashing, bonding, observable proxies, can align incentives in A.I. marketplaces like Autonolas, Fetch.ai, and Bittensor, reducing hidden action and hidden information.
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
From Social Brains to Agent Societies - Part 2
Principal-agent problems
open.substack.com
August 14, 2025 at 11:33 AM
This post explores how economic tools, such as staking, slashing, bonding, observable proxies, can align incentives in A.I. marketplaces like Autonolas, Fetch.ai, and Bittensor, reducing hidden action and hidden information.
🧪
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
"Examining approximately 5,000 cases evaluated by 50 school psychologists, Alessi found zero cases—not a single one—that concluded problems were due to curriculum factors, inappropriate teaching practices, or faulty school administration."
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#EduSky
open.substack.com/pub/giftednd...
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#EduSky
open.substack.com/pub/giftednd...
The Individual Pathology Bias in Child Mental Health Assessment
The systematic bias toward pathologizing individual children rather than examining environmental factors represents one of the most pervasive problems in mental health and educational assessment.
open.substack.com
August 13, 2025 at 8:36 AM
"Examining approximately 5,000 cases evaluated by 50 school psychologists, Alessi found zero cases—not a single one—that concluded problems were due to curriculum factors, inappropriate teaching practices, or faulty school administration."
🧪
#EduSky
open.substack.com/pub/giftednd...
🧪
#EduSky
open.substack.com/pub/giftednd...
"Something similar is happening with AI. A growing number of Christians are beginning to claim that the Antichrist will either be a superintelligence or be enabled by it. "
www.truthdig.com/articles/mac...
www.truthdig.com/articles/mac...
Machine Learning MAGA: Rise of the Christian Cyborg - Truthdig
There are signs that the transhumanism of Elon Musk is merging with the traditionalism of Steve Bannon.
www.truthdig.com
August 11, 2025 at 7:35 AM
"Something similar is happening with AI. A growing number of Christians are beginning to claim that the Antichrist will either be a superintelligence or be enabled by it. "
www.truthdig.com/articles/mac...
www.truthdig.com/articles/mac...
Noah Smith (@noahpinion)
substack.com
August 10, 2025 at 7:20 AM
This is government replaced by business. And not even productive business. These are extractive empires, data mines, financial gambits, digital landgrabs, engineered for short-term gain and long-term control.
substack.com/@sanderson15...
substack.com/@sanderson15...
Steve Anderson (@sanderson1581)
Thiel is not the problem. He’s a symptom. One face on the hydra. Treating him as the apex predator distracts from the larger reality: We are not dealing with a single actor, but with a networked syste...
substack.com
August 10, 2025 at 7:19 AM
This is government replaced by business. And not even productive business. These are extractive empires, data mines, financial gambits, digital landgrabs, engineered for short-term gain and long-term control.
substack.com/@sanderson15...
substack.com/@sanderson15...
Trustable A.I. in the modern era means we need access to reputation information about agents
knowthat.ai
knowthat.ai
AI Agent Directory & Reputation Tracker | Know That Agent
Discover trustworthy AI agents based on verified identity and reputation data. Find the perfect AI agent for your needs or submit your own to the directory.
knowthat.ai
August 9, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Trustable A.I. in the modern era means we need access to reputation information about agents
knowthat.ai
knowthat.ai
For truly scalable A.I. we need societies of agents underpinned by reliable trust frameworks like this.
cryptonews.com/news/singula...
cryptonews.com/news/singula...
SingularityNET and Privado ID Establish First Decentralized AI Agent Trust Registry
SingularityNET, the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance, joined hands with Privado ID to launch the first decentralized AI Agent Trust Registry, enabling users to verify AI Agents' safety and ...
cryptonews.com
August 8, 2025 at 8:13 AM
For truly scalable A.I. we need societies of agents underpinned by reliable trust frameworks like this.
cryptonews.com/news/singula...
cryptonews.com/news/singula...
China has made the conscious decision to invest in people, and kmowledge.... They treat human capital as infrastructure, the same way we treat attention as infrastructure.
open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/f...
open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/f...
From Dollar Dominance to the Slop Machine
Part 2: China, energy, and extraction versus creation
open.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 8:37 AM
China has made the conscious decision to invest in people, and kmowledge.... They treat human capital as infrastructure, the same way we treat attention as infrastructure.
open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/f...
open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/f...
It didn’t signal a recession — not yet — but it showed a rapidly slowing economy. And it was presumably especially disturbing for Trump and those around him, who have been boasting about how hot the economy is and sneering at critics
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
Caracas on the Potomac
Goodbye, reliable economic data
open.substack.com
August 2, 2025 at 10:50 AM
It didn’t signal a recession — not yet — but it showed a rapidly slowing economy. And it was presumably especially disturbing for Trump and those around him, who have been boasting about how hot the economy is and sneering at critics
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
This is A.I. doomsday. A dwindling human population, marching toward extinction, having spent the last of its energy and ingenuity building autonomous data centers to house the replicators that replaced it. Not because we lost control, but because we never had it.
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
From Genomes to Memomes
LLMs as Cultural Systems of Replication and Selection
open.substack.com
August 1, 2025 at 11:51 AM
This is A.I. doomsday. A dwindling human population, marching toward extinction, having spent the last of its energy and ingenuity building autonomous data centers to house the replicators that replaced it. Not because we lost control, but because we never had it.
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
As with the evolution of human societies, scaling A.I. agents is not simply a technical problem—it’s a political, economic, and ethical one. Practical A.I. is not just about building bigger models.
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
From Social Brains to Agent Societies
Evolving Cooperation for Autonomous Systems
open.substack.com
August 1, 2025 at 9:36 AM
As with the evolution of human societies, scaling A.I. agents is not simply a technical problem—it’s a political, economic, and ethical one. Practical A.I. is not just about building bigger models.
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
"As with the evolution of human societies, scaling AI agents is not simply a technical problem—it’s a political, economic, and ethical one. Practical AI is not just about building bigger models."
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
From Social Brains to Agent Societies
Evolving Cooperation for Autonomous Systems
open.substack.com
August 1, 2025 at 9:07 AM
"As with the evolution of human societies, scaling AI agents is not simply a technical problem—it’s a political, economic, and ethical one. Practical AI is not just about building bigger models."
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
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open.substack.com/pub/sphelps/...
Reposted by Dr. Steve Phelps
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking."
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
July 31, 2025 at 9:58 AM
"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking."
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Starmerism: nastier than Thatcherism, but without the vision.
July 30, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Starmerism: nastier than Thatcherism, but without the vision.
"The EU is an economic superpower, especially if it allies itself with the UK. It needs to start acting like it."
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
I Coulda Made a Better Deal
What, exactly, did Trump get from Europe?
open.substack.com
July 30, 2025 at 8:16 AM
"The EU is an economic superpower, especially if it allies itself with the UK. It needs to start acting like it."
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
"Steven Spielberg taught the world that the invasion of Normandy was an American triumph, but only two of the five beaches seized on that day were taken by Americans, while the other three fell to Britain and Canada."
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
Eighty Years Ago Today
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
open.substack.com
July 27, 2025 at 6:59 PM
"Steven Spielberg taught the world that the invasion of Normandy was an American triumph, but only two of the five beaches seized on that day were taken by Americans, while the other three fell to Britain and Canada."
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
"It seems farfetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply — and simple-mindedly — rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better"
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
The Most Frightening Fact About Trump
He is incompetent in every way that matters. And that may be irrelevant.
open.substack.com
July 27, 2025 at 5:23 PM
"It seems farfetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply — and simple-mindedly — rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better"
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
open.substack.com/pub/dgardner...
The reason our world currently resembles a 90s dystopian science fiction novel is because the rich and powerful are using sci-fi as a blueprint for their new world order.
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substack.com/@paulkrugman...
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substack.com/@paulkrugman...
Talking With Henry Farrell
Weaponized interdependence and tech bro ideology, oh my
substack.com
July 27, 2025 at 10:39 AM
The reason our world currently resembles a 90s dystopian science fiction novel is because the rich and powerful are using sci-fi as a blueprint for their new world order.
🧪
substack.com/@paulkrugman...
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substack.com/@paulkrugman...
