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ang42.bsky.social
Interested in applied machine learning. Volunteer @neuromatch.bsky.social & Climatematch About science, more or less. "È tutto sbagliato, è tutto da rifare" (Bartali) (... someday I may start to write something on substack.com/@drawanowl)
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🎯 Agree. I think it's easier for marketing to humanize the chatbots and mention AGI, but the underlying architecture is based on a stochastic behavior. Chatbots repeat the patterns (words) they have already seen. Stochastic parrots by Emily Bender is still my favorite definition.

I suspect that fact that the vast majority of LLM users don’t seem to have received this (really very simple!) message is because the AI companies have a vested interest in us not understanding it. “ChatGPT is smart, it just makes mistakes sometimes” is much more marketable than the truth.

Amazing: MIT researchers revealed how ChatGPT etc are destroying our brains and booby-trapped the report to expose those who want to use AI to ostensibly summarize the results. t.co/JXeTALBPds

About 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests, our species learned to live just about anywhere. Later, that ability helped our ancestors expand from Africa across the world. Here’s my story on the human niche [Gift link] nyti.ms/3ZBc7ID

Trump wants to revive “big beautiful coal.” I wrote about why that won’t be so easy. open.substack.com/pub/themoney...

‘once you get below a certain level of attainment, young people of white British ethnicity just don’t seem interested in going to university anymore. On the other hand, lower attainers from ethnic minority backgrounds are still quite keen to participate in HE’

🧵 Liste di attesa infinite, visite negate: così si nega il diritto alla salute in Italia www.valigiablu.it/esami-visite...

🧪 Why attack science? "Science [is] an independent voice ... guiding governments ... toward informed actions... That independence is why authoritarian regimes invariably target science & scientists. Authoritarian regimes treat science ... as an obstacle to overcome" 👇 blog.ucs.org/melissa-finu...

If you are a politician I don’t want to hear that you are on crusade. I don’t like the metaphors mission and campaign either. Just tell us what you want to do. Why it’s good and important. And how you propose to do it.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

Grazie al Financial Times per aver citato il primo (e per ora unico) post della versione inglese del mio blog, The Civic Economist. Fa piacere sapere che qualcuno lo stia già leggendo. Il prossimo post sarà dedicato alla guerra ai dati e alla scienza da parte dell’amministrazione Trump. 1/2

🧪 attn: researchers - consider participating in the McClintock Letters Initiative and write letters to your hometown newspaper editors about how the loss of science funding impacts you & your community. Webinar on Friday! blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-...

The kids are alright

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat

What’s the frequency, Kenneth? 🎧

It’s not a “culture war.” It’s a tantrum. A decades-long, pants-shitting scream from people mad they can’t bully the world into staying 1953.

Olivi al posto dei vigneti: l’olio delle Langhe rimpiazza il vino Sulle colline del Barolo si piantano gli olivi al posto dei vigneti. I produttori: «Ci adattiamo al cambiamento climatico» (Ma come? Esiste il cambiamento climatico? Ma davvero? 🙄)

This is your health on MAGA.

Da leggere. Stiamo consegnando il mondo a macchine non solo totalmente idiote, ma anche e soprattutto manipolatorie, bugiarde, accomodanti nel senso peggiore del termine.

I just published a piece about the recent U.S. State Department document that paints the EU as a threat to Western civilization—and implicitly calls for regime change in favor of the far right. In my view, it's essential reading for anyone trying to grasp the scale of the threat Europe is now facing

Webdoc sulla Festa della Repubblica che illustra anche altri momenti salienti che del 2 giugno 1946 furono le premesse. Un viaggio nel triennio 1945-48, tra preziosi video selezionati dall’archivio Rai e contenuti esclusivi, per ripercorrere il nostro passato attraverso le nuove tecnologie

Chaque 2 juin, l'Italie célèbre sa fête nationale, « La Festa della Repubblica ». Cette date commémore l'organisation du référendum institutionnel des 2 et 3 juin 1946 qui a donné naissance à la République italienne 😉. #CeJourLà fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_d...

The grasshopper gets it — divide and conquer. Today’s robber barons use the same playbook. But together, we have all the power. Watch.

I had one of those to play Pokemon back in the days

How toxic amino acids, peptides, and proteins, originally evolved as molecular weapons, are being repurposed as models for pharmaceutical research. Many existing drugs leverage the natural mechanisms of toxins, and one of the most famous examples is the Clostridium botulinum. 🧪

🧠💉 Blood fats and Alzheimer’s? A long-term study found that people with lower levels of certain 'bad' fats in their blood were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. 🔗 doi.org/10.1212/WNL.... #Alzheimers #BrainHealth #SciComm 🧪

Toxic proteins for drug discovery open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/t... #science

I will forever be haunted by this footage. Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity. What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives. 🌎🦑🧪

Sometimes you see a post and don’t think about it until later and can’t find it. Anyway thank you to whoever pointed out the main weakness in the argument that we had better colonise Mars because eventually the sun will explode.

The structure of human sweetness: Cell Sweet receptor bound to two widely used artificial sweeteners: sucralose and aspartame. A single receptor that mediates all our responses to sweet-tasting compounds.

Ora che habemus papam - e pure piuttosto promettente - vale la pena notare che, nel frattempo, la Fed ha denunciato il pericolo di stagflazione e confermato che i tassi di interesse non scenderanno, mentre Trump ha dichiarato guerra alle bambole e al cinema (oltre che, ovviamente, alla Fed). 1/3

One way Trump is making Americans poorer is by making the US dollar fall with his shenanigans, so things now cost almost 10% more when visiting Europe than before the inauguration.