Good read and worth bookmarking for later.

Look, I really will stop posting about Grok and epistemology, but the news stories keep coming.

Okay, really don’t want to spend any more time writing about Grok, but let’s talk about this passage: “With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions,” Musk claimed during the livestream. We’ve previously covered nebulous claims about “PhD-level” AI, finding them to be generally specious marketing talk. To return to my thoughts on AI and epistemology, I don’t think having a PhD is (or should be) a benchmark for content knowledge.

Love—don’t love—how all the constitutional and democratic dangers of our time are so closely married to low-grade scammishness.

Reading this through an Ellulian lens is interesting. In the 1950s, he was expressing concern about the valuing of (applied) technique over (basic) science. In this article, though, it’s clear how often that basic science is still described and defended in applied/technical terms. pushing the boundaries of knowledge seems to only be valuable if it “sow[s] practical spinoffs and breakthroughs” or helps the U.S. in its geopolitical competition. Gift link.

Surely this is a reasonable price to pay for the Nazi-praising Grok to “discover new physics” within the next year, as Elon promised last night. This kind of thing is why I hate “the genie is out of the bottle” arguments. I can’t help but hear them as “yes, people are going to create more CSAM, but all we can do is instead teach people to use these tools more responsibly.

Yesterday, I wrote my thoughts on how Grok’s “Nazi meltdown” helps illustrate some of my concerns about AI and epistemology. This coverage of Grok’s latest demo only reinforces that—Musk’s tinkering with the LLM to get the results he wants is at odds with his states naïve epistemology that an LLM can be “maximally truth-seeking,” as though there is a self-evident truth that an LLM can deliver in a straightforward way (that is, without all that mucking about behind the scenes).

There’s a genre of news story that I actively avoid following the discourse on but end up reading about once Mike Masnick writes on it, and then I get angry with everyone else. This fits nicely in that genre.

Karen Hao’s Empire of AI really emphasized for me how much stock is being put in AGI—especially as a motivator for AI companies. I am fine wirh concepts being hard to define, but I do think things get tricky when you can’t articulate how you’ll know when you’ve met the goal that serves as your raison d’être.

Disgusting and deliberate.

I hate this timeline.

Heartbreaking read. This line in particular was like a punch in the gut: I have lost a third of my body weight after nearly 21 months of war in Gaza.

It feels like it’s Big Tech’s world and schools are just living in it.

Voici des rappels importants.

Don’t know what to say here except that I don’t like any of this. Reminded of two arguments from Ellul: First, that an effective ethics of technology considers systematic effects, not “good” uses vs. “bad” uses, Second, that “because it exists” is not sufficient justification for adopting a technology. Anyway, here’s the gift link.

We donate to this food bank, so I take their concerns particularly seriously: “Our volume today is double what it was 12 years ago. Today, some of the early estimates that we’ve seen would suggest that we have to double our volume again in three years. That’s how daunting the task could be,” Halligan said.

Entre les vélos, les transports publics, et les trains, il me semble qu’il ne serait pas trop difficile de vivre en Suisse sans voiture, et je trouve cela très attirant.

More on why we need to talk epistemology when we talk generative AI: Musk tweaking his AI model to be more aligned with right-wing edgelords was inevitable, but there’s a broader point to be made: each AI model is a black box that supposedly gives objective answers but in reality is shaped by its owners. As more people look to AI to learn about the world, the people who control how it’s trained and how it responds will control our prevailing narratives.

Shame on me for not realizing just how badly this would affect my home state. Shame on all the Kentucky reps in Congress who voted for it anyway.

Voilà pourquoi il faut parler de la théorie de connaissance quand on parle de IA: On est passé d’un moteur de recherche à un moteur de réponse. C’est-à-dire que les algorithmes proposent des versions rédigées à partir des données qu’ils auront collectées sur Internet, puis reformulées sans que vous ayez rendu visite aux sites contenant ces éléments de réponse à votre requête.

Vive les vélos cargo !

Si on doit absolument investir au niveau national dans l’IA, je préfère cette approche (investir dans les recherches).

J’aimerais parler de ce sujet à mes étudiants. Même aux États-Unis, on doit nous demander de qui nous sommes dépendants dans notre vie numérique.

Hadn’t heard about this, and it feels like an invitation for a new research project of some kind.

I can’t find the right words for how this story makes me feel.

C’est bien inquiétant, cette idée de social scoring. Jacques Ellul trouverait beaucoup à critiquer. Et ce n’est pas le seul—j’ai beaucoup aimé ce resumé des critiques d’Adam Knight, à l’Université de Leyden: En réduisant les personnes à des profils algorithmiques, cela menacerait la vie privée, l’égalité et les procédures régulières. Ce n’est pas juste la surveillance qui est à craindre, mais également une “discrimination automatisée”, estime le chercheur.

Cet été, j’ai beaucoup réfléchi sur combien mon travail de prof rend bien plus facile la vie de parent pendant les vacances scolaires.

This problem makes me so angry, and while I appreciate this article’s exploration of different policy solutions, they also feel overwhelming to me because so many of them come with problems of their own.

J’avoue que je fais partie du problème, vu que j’ai souvent loué des Airbnb, y compris lors de mon dernier déplacement en Europe. Pourtant, vu les bêtises qui se déroulent actuellement aux É.-U., il m’est arrivé récemment de regarder les loyers à Genève, et j’ai pu voir combien la pénurie des logements pose un problème pour les locataires. Je dois revoir ma relation avec les Airbnb…

Well dammit.

Quelle horreur.

Reddit is a really interesting example of digital labor issues as they relate to both social media and AI. I wonder how things will go over the next few years.

Good overview of backlash to AI.

Bon, je comprends ces soucis, mais je ne suis pas sûr que de telles interdictions soient la bonne réponse. Pourtant, vu que je suis plus ouvert à une interdiction de l’IA à l’école, il faut que je développe un peu plus ma philosophie ici.

What. The. Hell. Is. This. Nonsense.

The Onion has once again done what only The Onion can do.