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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

@anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social

190 followers 79 following 980 posts

Botanist, taxonomist, phylogeneticist.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · Aug 9

We are making progress towards a natural classification of the Australian shrubby paper daisies, genera Cassinia and Ozothamnus.

doi.org/10.1002/tax....

Progress towards a monophyletic Ozothamnus (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae)

The Cassinia clade (Asteraceae: Gnaphalieae) is a predominantly shrubby group of ca. 100 species occurring in Australia and New Zealand. Most species are currently placed in the large genera Cassinia...

doi.org

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 50m

Beetles are neat. Just look at the little dude!

A tiny carpet beetle photographed with a 200x macro lens. The body is covered in black, brown, and white scales, and it has the cutest little club-shaped antennas.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1h

Have played around with Ollama for a work project and found (a) it works without a GPU, (b) it is SLOW, like >5 min for most queries, and (c) many models just don't work very well. I assume they are more compact versions compared to the ones you get via API. So, it works, but not very useful.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1h

The primary ethical issue for me isn't that I see lots of people losing work or having their salaries suppressed (are they?) but the providers earning subscription fees off Grand Theft IP. And judges and politicians just shrug after throwing the book at teens copying video games, Aaron Swartz, etc.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1h

The LLM makers may well want to crush labour, but outside of art, it doesn't seem to work well enough for that. The viable use cases appear to be slop art (including p**n), spam websites and books, Google but worse, low-stakes coding assistance, cheating on homework, and chatting with it.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 2h

This is also the appropriate response to the simpletons who say, I just want the news, without political bias. Even if someone were able to cover a student protest in completely unbiased language, they chose to cover a student protest instead of covering, say, lack of funding for health services.

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 14h

All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 3h

I wish people would become half as alarmed about large parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable and/or unsuitable for food production as they are about I watched Terminator as a child and it scared me.

CO2 emissions aren't even decreasing; full steam ahead.

www.statista.com/statistics/2...

Global CO2 emissions by year 1940-2024| Statista

Annual global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by more than 60 percent since 1990 and are now at their highest ever levels.

www.statista.com

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 3h

But first and foremost, there is the usual discrepancy between what articles like this one claim "AI" (LLMs, really) can do and how inept they are whenever I use them. And they aren't creative; if they can "design a virus", it is because the information how to do that is already out there anyway.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 3h

As a biologist (although admittedly not a bioweapons designer), I find it frustrating how easy people think designing life is, as if it is legos or something. Even if "AI" makes the design process more efficient, you'd still need a lab, and I guarantee that there would be lengthy trial-and-error.

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 13h

“In September, scientists at Stanford reported they had used A.I. to design a virus for the first time.”

Opinion | The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World

www.nytimes.com

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 18h

Word cloud (wordclouds.com) of the identification keys to the tribes and genera of Asteraceae in the online Flora of North America. No surprise to see heads (capitula), cypselas, and phyllaries being prominent; perhaps also no surprise with "sometimes" and "usually" 😂.

Circular word cloud with very many words of different sizes, too many to list. Most prominent are: sometimes, usually, heads, phyllaries, cypselae, leaves, pappi, arrays, part, and corollas.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Also, if there was a sentient super-AI, owning or controlling it would be slavery, but that is a different issue than whether super-AI would create a 'consumer cornucopia'.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Many people conflate capitalism with democracy, markets (which existed long before capitalism), and/or private ownership of 'stuff'. But capitalism is specifically private ownership of the means of production plus free, salaried employees. AI makes the latter obsolete = no capitalism.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Fourth, and second-most obviously, a system where all goods and services are effectively free to produce could not be capitalism anymore. It could be communism if the people communally owned the super-AI or cyberpunk neo-feudalist dystopia if a few billionaires control it, but not capitalism.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Third, and most obviously, while the likes of Andreessen control the means of production, they would not allow goods and services to be priced at near zero. (Here is also the misunderstanding of the labour theory of value: it is about value, not about prices set by a monopolist exerting his power.)

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Second, how would even super-AI even in theory remove all labour, from mining tin ore to changing nappies? It thinks very hard, and suddenly supermarket shelves are stocked and batteries are installed? But again, in fairness, that may be why Andreessen called it a 'fallacy'.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

First, it is interesting to note that we here have a far-right billionaire entrepreneur endorsing the Marxist labour theory of value: the value of goods is determined by the labour required to create them. No labour = no value. Interesting because that theory is usually rejected by the right.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

This is making the rounds, and it bugs me.

In fairness, part of what he said was that everybody being jobless is a 'fallacy', so that the alternative scenario of 'consumer cornucopia' is seemingly not even his own expectation. Still, he says if AI did make everybody unemployed, that would be great.

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 1d

He said this in January lol

A world in which human wages crash from AI -- logically, necessarily -- is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero. Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Amazing to contrast these lived experiences with the "free enterprise is efficient" and "business leaders wouldn't do anything wasteful" and "billionaire CEOs deserve their status" ideology that we are all immersed in every day.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Deleted half a year's worth of emails, brought the storage down from 93% full to 91%

Yippee

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

No, if you want to be a Serious Person, what you do is you decry everybody who foresees something happening as a crazy alarmist, and then when it has happened, you immediately accept it as normal.

Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

Ana Bedoya @botana-bedoya.bsky.social · 2d

One week to apply before reviews start for the postdoc I am offering investigating the tempo and pattern of river connections with the closure of the isthmus of Panama and its impact on river plant (Podostemaceae) migration. Genomic+fossil+geological data + fieldwork 👇

Ana Bedoya @botana-bedoya.bsky.social · Aug 29

I am recruiting a postdoc to work for 2-3 yrs on our NSF-funded project aiming to investigate plant migration and river connectivity with the closure of the Isthmus of Panama. Leading publications, fieldwork in CR & Panama, applying and expanding phylo. & pop.gen tools👇

www.nybg.org/about/work-w...

Employment | New York Botanical Garden

Find out what employment opportunities are available at The New York Botanical Garden.

www.nybg.org

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Now that's a design choice

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

I once had to stop a colleague from using "South Coast" to describe the range of a species in a manuscript intended for an international journal, whose readers would have assumed he was referring to an actual south coast, as if words have meanings and are intended for communication. Those naifs.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing tops New South Wales in Australia. Many locals consider nearly all of the eastern half of the state to be "Western New South Wales", because it is west of Sydney. And the eastern coast of Australia north and south of Sydney are the "North Coast" and the "South Coast", respectively.

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 2d

Pittsburgh edging the Midwest doesn't seem right somehow.

William Hazen @williamhazen.bsky.social · 3d

This is the most accurate depiction of the Midwest to date. Wichita has always felt like the last Midwest city while also being the first plains city.

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Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn @anschmidtlebuhn.bsky.social · 1d

The fork lift driver who collapsed the storage shelves and injured several of his colleagues must have had a cunning five-dimensional plan, there is no other explanation.

Wait, no, he isn't a billionaire, so in that case, everybody can see the obvious. Silly me.

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Reposted by Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 2d

When you could code silly quizzes on Facebook, it was FULL of "what would you be in medieval times?!" etc.

I made one that nearly always answered "died as a child", "died in childbirth", "lived and died as a servant"

People got SUPER mad with it.

Everyone assumes they'll be at the top of the tree

William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 2d

The subtext of ‘we should be more like Dubai’, beyond the obvious racism, is ‘I should have a servant’.

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