Andrea Lathrop
@cabernet.bsky.social
Wine... Cognitive Science... Photography... tech stuff... former Aslin Lab (Master's) and Eppler Lab (with Jackie Gibson emeritus) so I'm a weird mix of Gibsonian affordances, visual statistical learning and anticipatory eye movements. Sometimes academic.
Pinned
Andrea Lathrop
@cabernet.bsky.social
· Sep 27
Here are a few more from the same series (📷 credit: myself, Post Malone sound check, New Year's Rockin' Eve, Dec 31, 2019):
This seems to be the viral conversation du jour, so I'm going to record my thoughts in a thread (below) as I watch it: www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutsk...
Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing.”
www.dwarkesh.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:27 PM
This seems to be the viral conversation du jour, so I'm going to record my thoughts in a thread (below) as I watch it: www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutsk...
Revenue streams and more data than everyone else is all you need.
November 25, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Revenue streams and more data than everyone else is all you need.
Reposted by Andrea Lathrop
Slate status: not blank
Preconfigured neuronal firing sequences in human brain organoids www.nature.com/articles/s41... "...results suggest that temporal sequences do not arise in an experience-dependent manner, but are rather constrained by a preconfigured architecture established during neurodevelopment"
Preconfigured neuronal firing sequences in human brain organoids - Nature Neuroscience
Examining human brain organoids and ex vivo neonatal murine cortical slices demonstrates that structured neuronal sequences emerge independently of sensory input, highlighting the potential of brain o...
www.nature.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Slate status: not blank
"We live in an era where personal expression is saturated by digital filters, hivemind thinking is promoted through endless algorithms and academic freedom itself is under assault by the weakest minds among us. AI has only made this worse. It is a crisis."
“History shows us that the right to literacy came at a heavy cost…those oppressed recognized that literacy is liberation. To my students & to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write & think when others once risked their lives & died for the freedom to do so”
I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking.
"Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."
www.huffpost.com
November 25, 2025 at 6:56 AM
"We live in an era where personal expression is saturated by digital filters, hivemind thinking is promoted through endless algorithms and academic freedom itself is under assault by the weakest minds among us. AI has only made this worse. It is a crisis."
I somehow missed this news: www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-so...
After 35 Years, a Solution to the CIA’s Kryptos Puzzle Has Been Found
After decades of speculation, two writers uncovered the answer to the Kryptos code’s final cipher
www.scientificamerican.com
November 25, 2025 at 12:34 AM
I somehow missed this news: www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-so...
That's not science, that's a waffle Bart threw up there...
Over many interviews, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Michael Scherer about how he plans to remake America’s public-health system. Can he lead the scientific establishment he’s spent much of his life crusading against?
Read more in our new cover story: theatln.tc/q9hXxlbM
Read more in our new cover story: theatln.tc/q9hXxlbM
November 24, 2025 at 9:30 PM
That's not science, that's a waffle Bart threw up there...
Might wander to Middlebury, tomorrow.
November 24, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Might wander to Middlebury, tomorrow.
I just want one tab that is a chronological feed of accounts I follow, and a second tab that is timely, carefully vetted, highly accurate local, national, international news, which can be linked to & discussed in the first tab, and the articles linked to are not pay- or subscription-walled.
"Musk has said publicly that he wants to make X’s algorithm “purely AI” and give users the ability to adjust what appears in their feeds by asking xAI’s Grok... Those features are supposed to launch by the end of 2025, Musk has said."
What could go wrong?
www.theinformation.com/articles/twi...
What could go wrong?
www.theinformation.com/articles/twi...
The Twins Pushing Elon Musk’s Plans to Replace X Staff With Grok
Last month, Elon Musk’s X laid off half of the engineering team tasked with building and running systems to fight spam, influence campaigns and illegal content, among other trust and safety issues, ac...
www.theinformation.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:05 PM
I just want one tab that is a chronological feed of accounts I follow, and a second tab that is timely, carefully vetted, highly accurate local, national, international news, which can be linked to & discussed in the first tab, and the articles linked to are not pay- or subscription-walled.
We need to figure out how to avoid 'surveillance state' being the solution to artificial agent detection.
As @seanjwestwood.bsky.social's terrifying new PNAS article demonstrates, LLMs can now pass almost every attention check, mirror personas, stay consistent across pages, and systematically bias responses in the aggregate.
So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.
So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.
November 24, 2025 at 3:51 PM
We need to figure out how to avoid 'surveillance state' being the solution to artificial agent detection.
It feels like everyone is trying to turn this entire week into the day before Thanksgiving, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I have sh*t that needs to get done, first.
November 24, 2025 at 9:32 AM
It feels like everyone is trying to turn this entire week into the day before Thanksgiving, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I have sh*t that needs to get done, first.
I "ever use" YouTube, in that if someone links to a video, it is almost always hosted on YouTube, so if the video plays, I have "used" YouTube, but that is quite different from how I "use" Twitter or BSky. Similarly, I "ever use" Reddit, in the sense that sometimes search results return Reddit.
UPDATE: Americans who use
YouTube 84%
Facebook 71%
Instagram 50%
TikTok 37%
WhatsApp 32%
Reddit 26%
Snapchat 25%
X (Twitter) 21%
Threads 8%
Bluesky 4%
Truth Social 3%
Full Pew Research Center report: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/
YouTube 84%
Facebook 71%
Instagram 50%
TikTok 37%
WhatsApp 32%
Reddit 26%
Snapchat 25%
X (Twitter) 21%
Threads 8%
Bluesky 4%
Truth Social 3%
Full Pew Research Center report: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/
November 24, 2025 at 8:14 AM
I "ever use" YouTube, in that if someone links to a video, it is almost always hosted on YouTube, so if the video plays, I have "used" YouTube, but that is quite different from how I "use" Twitter or BSky. Similarly, I "ever use" Reddit, in the sense that sometimes search results return Reddit.
I mean, just seeing this post, I'm singing it in my head, right now...
November 24, 2025 at 5:22 AM
I mean, just seeing this post, I'm singing it in my head, right now...
Reposted by Andrea Lathrop
Doing some A/B tests on google AI labs vs public facing gemini 3 hold on
Gemini 3's hallucinations are *bad* bad.
November 24, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Doing some A/B tests on google AI labs vs public facing gemini 3 hold on
Reposted by Andrea Lathrop
Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
World-models in your head
Talking with a lot of people, they have rather shocking different kinds of world-models. I believe that people have somewhat specialized simulators. Let me list some and then give you the chance to ad...
docs.google.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
I think Elon should go one step further, and color-code posts by location, rather than burying the now-disabled feature under a click. (Bluesky, too. We should know the sources of our information.)
November 22, 2025 at 8:08 PM
I think Elon should go one step further, and color-code posts by location, rather than burying the now-disabled feature under a click. (Bluesky, too. We should know the sources of our information.)
So... Elon pulled the location feature because it was working as designed?
November 22, 2025 at 7:46 PM
So... Elon pulled the location feature because it was working as designed?
Idly wondering how many people will actually pay to read the rest of the article being referred to so obliquely.
November 22, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Idly wondering how many people will actually pay to read the rest of the article being referred to so obliquely.
Am I finishing this book because I *want* to finish this book, or am I finishing this book because it is due back at the library, soon?
November 22, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Am I finishing this book because I *want* to finish this book, or am I finishing this book because it is due back at the library, soon?
<planning an entire meal around the Italian red wine vinegar I just found for $2.99>
November 22, 2025 at 5:57 PM
<planning an entire meal around the Italian red wine vinegar I just found for $2.99>
The grand conclusion of the capitalist experiment finds that everyone just wants to be skinny, and have sex with robots, I guess.
November 22, 2025 at 5:45 PM
The grand conclusion of the capitalist experiment finds that everyone just wants to be skinny, and have sex with robots, I guess.
The Nano Banana image posts are unsettling in that now instead of wondering whether purported real posts are genAI, I am wondering whether purported genAI posts are real fakes.
November 22, 2025 at 3:37 PM
The Nano Banana image posts are unsettling in that now instead of wondering whether purported real posts are genAI, I am wondering whether purported genAI posts are real fakes.
That was fast. Tonight's bedtime research, I guess...
November 22, 2025 at 3:11 PM
That was fast. Tonight's bedtime research, I guess...
Reposted by Andrea Lathrop
In a recent greenhouse study, researchers showed that yellow flag iris plants, working in symbiosis with fungi on their roots, can take up and transform certain PFAS compounds from water. This plant–fungus partnership enhanced pollutant removal compared with plants alone.
buff.ly/ll7EuQu via @ACS
buff.ly/ll7EuQu via @ACS
November 22, 2025 at 11:30 AM
In a recent greenhouse study, researchers showed that yellow flag iris plants, working in symbiosis with fungi on their roots, can take up and transform certain PFAS compounds from water. This plant–fungus partnership enhanced pollutant removal compared with plants alone.
buff.ly/ll7EuQu via @ACS
buff.ly/ll7EuQu via @ACS
Reposted by Andrea Lathrop
Donald Trump has hurled a wrench into one of the most sensitive negotiations currently under way in Europe, potentially derailing efforts to help fund Ukraine to stay in the fight against Russia. 👇
‘Witkoff needs a psychiatrist’: Europeans fume at Trump’s plan to profit from frozen Russian assets
Diplomats and officials react with outrage to new details of the U.S. peace plan, warning it could wreck their efforts to help Ukraine survive the war.
www.politico.eu
November 22, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Donald Trump has hurled a wrench into one of the most sensitive negotiations currently under way in Europe, potentially derailing efforts to help fund Ukraine to stay in the fight against Russia. 👇
... resigning is a weird choice (MTG).
November 22, 2025 at 4:53 AM
... resigning is a weird choice (MTG).