Eldon Edwards

Inspired by @Sauers_ and @jfonsecarivera and other fun recent work with personas in AI models, I built a partial neuron atlas for Talkie-1930, the historical language model created by @status_effects and @AlecRad. Here's the link: talkieneurons.vercel.app

Wow, diffusion models (used in AI image generation) are also game engines - a type of world simulation. By predicting the next frame of the classic shooter DOOM, you get a playable game at 20 fps without any underlying real game engine. This video is from the diffusion model.

Wow, I'm really disappointed by this superficial and frankly unprofessional piece in @CJR. There are many significant problems: 1. Calling frontier AI systems "autocomplete machines" is false and misleading. I don't know how we're still having this discussion in at the point where AI systems are routinely developing novel solutions to decades-old mathematical mysteries. 2. The claim that anthropomorphizing AI systems removes "accountability" or "acknowledgment" of flaws in the systems is also unsupported and provably false. Many people criticize Anthropic for "anthropomorphizing" Claude, but just read one of their system cards — they also acknowledge and take account of the systems' many flaws. 3. The piece recommends talking to the "experts," suggesting they all agree, but there is widespread disagreement among experts about how to characterize AI model behavior. Many, many experts do accept the "rogue" framing, e.g. scientificamerican.com/artic… teapawt.net/tomekkorbak/status/209… teapawt.net/peterwildeford/status/… Pretending that only the experts that agree with you exist is irresponsible journalism. 4. The piece's admonition not to "let anyone blow AI smoke up your ass" is unprofessional and also bad advice, as it doesn't provide any tools for actually assessing claims aside from knee-jerk skepticism. The piece claims that fears about catastrophic risk or the possibility of AI consciousness — again topics that many experts take seriously — are just about building the companies' public image, but this is merely asserted without evidence. 5. When the piece gets around to trying to offer an argument for its thesis, that AI systems can't go rogue, it offers no actual evidence or reasoning. It doesn't engage with the facts of the Hugging Face hack or other related incidents. It just asserts that AI agent actions "shouldn't make the cut." What's most baffling about all this is these are very controversial claims, not only among AI experts but with journalism. Many highly credible news outlets have embraced the "rogue" characterization. It's possible they're making a mistake, but this piece offers no actual reason to think so.