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

The big AI story of the past 6 months is: Companies now claim that their AI models are capable of genuine reasoning. And the big question is: Is that true? I found that the best answer lies in between hype and skepticism. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

AI companies now claim that their models are capable of genuine reasoning — the type of thinking you and I do when we want to solve a problem. Is that true? What counts as reasoning?

submitted 2 days ago • 18 comments

I cannot stop looking at this illustration of Socrates and his students. Al-Mubashir, Turkish School, 13th century: aeon.co/ideas/arabic...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Two new AISI papers: one on safety cases the other on safety frameworks! So far AISI has published a safety case template for inability arguments and a safety case sketch for AI control arguments; the new paper discusses why we are excited about them at a high-level. 🧵 x.com/MarieBassBuh...

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Glad the Pope spoke about this! I would add: Not only is Vance misreading the Bible, he's actually misreading St Augustine himself — the source he's theoretically using to claim we should have a hierarchy of love with non-Americans on the bottom rung www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

AI is impersonating human therapists. Can it be stopped? @vox.com @sigalsamuel.bsky.social

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I write a philosophical advice column for Vox and I want to hear what questions are plaguing you today! Do you have a personal/ethical dilemma? Here are some examples: vox.com/your-mileage... Here's where you can submit your question anonymously: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

We don't talk nearly enough about the role of AI as a mechanism for efficiently scaling administrative control.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

PSA Robert Musil is so underappreciated! His novel "The Man Without Qualities" is really enjoyable and interesting!

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

bookmarking

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

I write a philosophical advice column for Vox and I want to hear what questions are plaguing you today! Do you have a personal/ethical dilemma? Here are some examples: vox.com/your-mileage... Here's where you can submit your question anonymously: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Exclusive: California has a new plan to stop AI from pretending to be your human therapist ... it's about time!

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Same in the US. Americans don't want AI that’s smarter than humans www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

I read this article organically this morning from @vox.com and I have not stopped thinking about it. Then I found this from the reporter who wrote it. Worth the read.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

I spoke to @washingtonpost.com about reports that AI tools are being used with federal data noting that this is occurring without transparency, consent, or attention to privacy and security concerns, and heightening the American public's mistrust of AI www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

submitted 17 days ago • 12 comments

An important & insightful analysis from @sigalsamuel.bsky.social. Definitely worth a read! And I'll say again, empathy is parochial in the mind. What helps societies flourish is intermittent upstream reciprocity (paying it forward outside your network). And religion is a mechanism to nudge that.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Would-be theologian JD Vance offers a godawful reading of Christianity Here, I argue that (a) the sources on "ordo amoris" don't say what he thinks AND (b) the core question — what do we owe strangers? — is a genuinely important philosophical question! www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Join us on Thursday evening to discuss how Jewish Reform has shaped contemporary Judaism, the movement’s complicated relationships with assimilation and whiteness, and the original Reform vision of Judaism beyond nationalism. Hope to see you there! jewishcurrents.org/event/judais...

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

The problem with the Ordo Amoris notion is simple: you don’t need religion for it. Empathy is parochial by nature. Every biological model shows that paying-it-forward at times to strangers (even over close others) increases human flourishing. 1/n

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

ICYMI I wrote about the real vision of the broligarchs — tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. Their plan is even darker than most people think, and stems from shoddy readings of science fiction, transhumanism, and...Nietzsche. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Fyi I write a philosophical advice column for Vox! If you love travel but feel conflicted about it because flights emit so much carbon, check out the latest installment. I explore the idea of the "moral saint" and whether it makes sense to be an absolutist about flying: www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Interesting paper that tests GPT-4o’s ability to handle financial predictions and finds weak numeric reasoning & that a lot of apparent ability is actually due to memorized training data. At the same time, they show promise when combined with tool use. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

submitted 25 days ago • 3 comments

Those who care about #AnimalRights should also note that the inspector general who was forcefully removed today was also involved with investigating #AnimalAbuse on farms & research labs, including Elon Musk’s gruesome experiments on monkeys for his Neurolink venture.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

I would like less philosophy "from the point of view of the universe" and more philosophy "from the point of view of the nervous system"

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

An LLM "creates textual claims, and then predicts the citations that might be associated with similar text. Obviously, this practice violates all norms of scholarly citation. At best, LLMs gesticulate toward the shoulders of giants." Bender, West, and I contributed to this pro/con piece in PNAS.

submitted 27 days ago • 13 comments

Follow my brilliant writer @sigalsamuel.bsky.social 👑, who's new to bluesky! 💕 She covers AI ethics, the mind, and the future of consciousness, and writes this lovely philosophical advice column www.vox.com/future-perfe...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments