peterwilliams97.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Regarding technology's impact on people and society, beware of rebound effects. For instance, "faster" communication tools (email, slack) have led to more volume with decreased quality and we spend more, not less, time communicating. People and society adapt to tools, reaching a new equilibrium

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

LLM vs LLM. Note how Claude identifies the high memory weakness in the ChatGPT Advent of Code solution. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

submitted 51 days ago • 1 comment

Preparing for an AI boss. www.linkedin.com/posts/peterw...

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

This is a disaster in the making. What advice has Treasury been giving Chalmers? www.smh.com.au/polit...

submitted 58 days ago • 8 comments

Most governments have shown zero interest in making sure new technologies raise rather than lower overall standards of living. Instead, politicians in both parties are busy seeking campaign contributions from the modern makers of income inequality. So that job - tech for people - falls to us.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

This is an excellent illustration of the challenges presented by "alignment". Whose values and concerns are to be reflected in the alignment? It is, and always will be, a political decision. Language models are political models.

submitted 58 days ago • 2 comments

Private health insurance is a dud. That’s why a majority of Australians don’t have it | Grogonomics www.theguardian.com/...

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

If you've never donated to Wikipedia, now's the time. Elon Musk is attacking it because it's one of the only sources of honest, curated information that he can't control. www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-ta...

submitted 61 days ago • 435 comments

Some of my thoughts on OpenAI's o3 and the ARC-AGI benchmark aiguide.substack.com/p/did-openai...

submitted 63 days ago • 17 comments

From a 9th or 10th century schoolgirl’s letter to her teacher. Wonderful thread on the student’s world and women’s writing.

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

If you read nothing else about AI this week, read this - absolutely fascinating, ties together a whole bunch of recent developments in the field Wrote my own notes here but really this piece defies summarization, you should absorb the whole thing simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/19/...

submitted 67 days ago • 5 comments

GhatGPT-o1 underwhemled me on Advent of Code. www.linkedin.com/posts/peterw...

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

GitHub added a permanent free tier for GitHub Copilot today, including access to both GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. My notes here: simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/18/...

submitted 68 days ago • 3 comments

Our energy retailer just wrote to us with the good news that we would be switched to a smart meter, unless we objected. Of course we objected. The moronic/greedy implementation of "time of day" tariffs charges you for the peak day in every month. Unless you live a very regular life, that's crazy.

submitted 68 days ago • 5 comments

Tim Apple knows how to play the game, but also, this is a tell about how tariffs are going to work.

submitted 69 days ago • 73 comments

"Impossible to sell people's belongings without breaking into their houses", burglars say.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

peak capitalism is creating an apocalyptic traffic jam in the middle of nowhere

submitted 538 days ago • 59 comments

In my book ‘Despotism On Demand’ I term this retail business model ‘flexible despotism’

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

Tech critics are used to being disingenuously denigrated, but Casey Newton’s screed against AI skeptics illustrates a deeper problem with tech journalism. It needs to be confronted if some of the most powerful people in the world are ever to be properly held to account.

submitted 75 days ago • 11 comments

www.linkedin.com/posts/peterw...

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

Well, well, well. ANU’s Genevieve Bell kept working a lucrative side gig with Intel even after she took the University’s top job www.afr.com/work-and-car...

submitted 76 days ago • 5 comments

Made a list of resources for open source language models with @soldaini.net ahead of the tutorial tomorrow at 930 AM. github.com/allenai/awes...

submitted 76 days ago • 3 comments

I remember when you could just buy a computer program like Microsoft Word or Photoshop and just have it on your computer forever without having to pay monthly or yearly. What a time that was

submitted 78 days ago • 948 comments

Camperdown looks nice because of the trees in Manifold St.

submitted 78 days ago • 0 comments

A doctor’s letter to United Healthcare for denying nausea meds for a child on chemo

submitted 81 days ago • 1765 comments

OpenAI in 2024: “No AI for weapons or military” “Do use our AI to make weapons to hurt yourself or others” “Military is fine, but no AI for weapons” “Sure put it on battlefield drones” www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/04/1...

submitted 82 days ago • 9 comments

I don't know who needs to know this, but Pro Publica has an online thing that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial. (which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases) projects.propublica.org/claimfile/

submitted 339 days ago • 997 comments

banger www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24...

submitted 80 days ago • 2 comments

At some point, how does nobody in the organization say “This might save us a bit of money, but is it really worth coming across as inhuman ghouls?” (Probably a sensible question in much wider circumstances.)

submitted 82 days ago • 27 comments

Star gazers in ancient Mesopotamia focused on recurring stuff like planetary motion, but sometimes they wrote about meteors. Watching from Babylon, one wrote: “Night of the 7th, last part of the night, a meteor which was very bright in the middle of the sky” oracc.museum.upenn.edu//adsd/adart1...

submitted 81 days ago • 11 comments

Having to pay more to attract staff? God forbid www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

submitted 83 days ago • 14 comments

HITL. The secret behind much AI.

submitted 83 days ago • 0 comments

One of the weirder scholarly practices regarding generative AI that seems to have been normalized is citing chatbots. I say normalized because many univs & scholarly associations recommend it as an element of proper scholarship. But it doesn't make sense when you consider what a citation means. 1/

submitted 84 days ago • 11 comments

Neo-liberalism is working well for Australia's main politic parties. If are suffering from it because you rent or earn an income below median, that's ok with Mr. Albanese and Mr. Dutton. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

submitted 85 days ago • 0 comments

TIL Some people still watch or listen to main stream media. If she's as good as they say, I hope to see her on this platform. womensagenda.com.au/latest/what-...

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

I am not expecting the 2024 Creepiest Product of the Year to be a close race. www.wired.com/story/micros...

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

I wonder why universities are losing their social licence? From today’s AFR

submitted 86 days ago • 2 comments

Along with legit use of force, control of currency is one of two foundational elements of democracy. Crypto is currency in private control. As such, it is inherently anti-democratic. Crypto bros bought off our politicians. Now they want us to bail them out. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

submitted 88 days ago • 6 comments

It’s the way they’re bragging about the ban - when everyone knows it won’t work 😱😱 They know it won’t work - but they’re still bragging - because they feel safe that NewsCorp/Stokes/Nine/ABC won’t call them out. They get their headline - and it won’t blow up till after the next election #auspol

submitted 88 days ago • 14 comments

Teals impact at the last election was a figment of everyone's imagination (plus Laborals will kill them with the new donation laws).

submitted 88 days ago • 1 comment

Crypto bros are feeling confident. www.linkedin.com/posts/a16z_b...

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

The "Chief AI Officer" of America, Elon Musk How will Elon Musk shape the future of Artificial Intelligence in 2025 and beyond? Let's dive deeper. A new kind of Government is forming. How might DOGE and Elon Musk impact the future of AI? www.ai-supremacy.com/p/the-chief-...

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

Here's a novel idea: give poor people more money and they might be....less poor. But too radical for the Australian government. Who has no problem giving huge tax concessions to the uber-wealthy, but won't raise a million kids out of #poverty. #RaiseTheRate www.theguardian.com/society/2024...

submitted 92 days ago • 2 comments

Here's a good video on the Danish cost-rental social housing financing model, where tenants pay rents tied to the capital cost, then once repaid into a rolling solidarity fund. www.bbc.com/storyworks/b... The attached diagram from Norris and Lawson (2022) shows how the capital structure works.

submitted 91 days ago • 3 comments