Christian Humanist / Journo / Editor @Plough, @mereorthodoxy / Rooted cosmopolitan / Wife to @zugzwanged / A spider sitting at the center of my web / Stay Human
Manhattan, New York
Joined October 2008
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The fact of the matter is that if I wake up and am not in a port city— that is, not in a city where I can easily orient myself to the ocean— I feel extremely confused all day.
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
It's fun to think about how if instead of devoting vast resources and human intelligence to the most dystopian life-negating shit imaginable we had spent the capital of industrial modernity on building socially vibrant life-affirming worlds centered on human dignity and value
We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.
block.xyz/dessa
no
Researchers connected a living plant to a robot.. and it can now talks, walks, and knows what it wants.
They call it “PlantBot”
They took a living plant and fused it with a mobile robotic body.
To connect them, they used a decentralized network of LLMs to act as the central nervous system.
Here is the genius of it:
Biological organisms and machines operate on entirely different planes. Historically, bridging them required rigid, low-level analog signal mapping.
This paper entirely abandons that approach.
Instead of hard-coding signals, the system translates everything, soil moisture, pH levels, temperature, and visual data, directly into natural language.
The plant doesn’t just output data. It uses LLMs to "talk" to its robotic body.
The architecture is wild:
• A network of AI agents operates asynchronously to handle vision, sensing, and movement.
• Multi-channel probes read the plant's health, while LiDAR and cameras scan the room.
• The LLM translates these biological needs into physical actions in real-time.
• The plant actually interacts with humans and navigates the world as a cohesive, autonomous entity.
The LLM is no longer just a chatbot.
It is a biological-mechanical translator.
By mediating communication through natural language, they gave a houseplant autonomous agency in the physical world.
We’ve been obsessing over AIs trapped in servers or humanoid robots mimicking people.
We completely missed the possibility that AI might become the connective tissue bridging organic life and machines.
The next era of artificial life won’t just be silicon.
It’s going to be a hybrid.
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
AI companies: “AI is going to cure cancer and unify physics.”
Also AI companies: “Check out our new product! It’s for phone scams :)”
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
engine engine number nine
on the new york transit line
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry
And that the correct answer was described in Mark 8:24 along with the secondary healing of perception needed
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
A core curriculum engages students with a millennia-long tradition of ideas. By the end, they should think of themselves as part of that conversation. Inserting a lot of discipline-specific texts that all advance the same viewpoint undermines that goal and narrows their vision.
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
What more could they possibly do to telegraph their heart's truest desire for where this will all go, and that data centers and even x-risk are not the ultimate stakes of AI?
We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.
block.xyz/dessa
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
In case anyone's wondering, the expectation at the frontier labs is basically this:
1) We grit our teeth as the world slogs its way through the cyber apocalypse. (They've been expecting it for years, and calling it the "vulnpocalypse" internally.)
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
As a humanities person I feel a mixture of genuine sympathy and wry amusement seeing STEM people react to AI with like “What’s the point of learning or thinking anything if it’s all *useless*!?”
I just joined the heck out of this project. Check it out!
The medieval poets did not believe that the heavens fatalistically determined our future, but they did believe they each had a character that influenced the spiritual climate.
Take my short quiz to find out which sphere you most naturally belong to!
mythicmindfellowship.com/sph…
Checks out actually
I got Sol (IV) and Saturn (second). This was fun to do and think about.
So Caspian and Dawn Treader eh? I’ll get on that.
The writing prompt about the last king and the falling stars was an instant “that one” for me.
And ah…to have uninterrupted time with some philosophical books would be bliss. Though I should like someone to ponder with. For a bit.
For all of those who, in the face of an uncertain future and the need to grow up and make a life, are finding themselves in this situation, may I suggest a) baptism b) marriage c) learn skills your great great grandparents knew and d) Butlerian jihad
evil
We believe voice is the most natural way to interact with intelligence, so we created Dessa, the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built. Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence.
block.xyz/dessa
Susannah Black Roberts retweeted
Details: My politics are libertarian (in a sensible, adult way), and I’m an evangelical, like 1/5 people in this big country (but very few in the national press). I enjoy editing a range of views, and I live in Pittsburgh, a good vantage for nuanced takes on politics & culture.
