Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 12h

We shouldn't overlook the fridge either

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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 17h

My HPLC was definitely overlooked

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery

The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality.

www.nature.com

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EmZeeGee @emzeegee.bsky.social · 14h

If he were worthy of winning the Nobel peace prize, this is not a thing Norway would need to worry about

Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · 14h

What a shitty thing to have to worry about

Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel peace prize

US president may impose tariffs, demand higher Nato contributions or even declare Norway an enemy, analyst says

www.theguardian.com

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Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 20h

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Screenshot of a paper abstract:

“Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.

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Joshua Shapiro @josh.shapiro.foo · 13h

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything by AI. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed with AI, or buy anything sold or processed with AI, or process anything sold, bought, or processed by AI, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed by AI.

Nancy Parmalee @nparmalee.bsky.social · 15h

I don’t want to generate or receive an email, document, manuscript, PowerPoint deck, post it note, grocery list, novel, film, or hit list that has been generated with AI.

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 15h

I write because I love writing. I love writing even when I'm struggling with a writing problem that is killing me. Finding a way through that problem is both intensely rewarding and also helps me become a better writer. There is no reason for me to ever outsource that.

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Sue Cowley @suecowley.bsky.social · 16h

Yet another great piece about how it's okay to reject AI. ⬇️

Dr. Mag 🌿👾 @nobugsnous.bsky.social · 20h

I wrote this blog about how feeling like a killjoy whenever I talk about GenAI.
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...

On Being a GenAI Killjoy

Maggie Fernandes, University of Arkansas Photo by Maksim Romashkin on Pexels.com At a recent teaching talk about GenAI refusal, an audience member asked Megan, Jen, and me this question: how d…

refusinggenai.wordpress.com

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emily moonlight @threnody.bsky.social · 23h

just watched a dozen people ask microsoft copilot experts their most pressing questions and those questions were 90% “how do i turn it off?” and “when i turn it off, is it really off or is it spying on me?”

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 19h

How over- and underrepresented are different causes of death in the media?

Another way to visualize this data is to measure how over- or underrepresented each cause is.

To do this, we calculate the ratio between a cause’s share of deaths and its share of news articles.

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Aimee Cozza Illustration @aimeecozza.com · 22h

I also have a large glossy vinyl sticker version of this design, which is $1 each: shop.aimeecozza.com/product/100-...

100% Human Made Stickers - Shop Aimee Cozza Illustration

Show people that you don't use data generated images (aka "AI") in your work with this sticker! Glossy vinyl style, black and white 2.7"x2" Ships in a regular envelope via USPS to save on shipping...

shop.aimeecozza.com

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Mike Luckovich @mluckovich.bsky.social · 1d

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Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 18h

I would bet the poor worm in his brain is screaming to get out

Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 18h

I hope you are right

Reposted by Robin Thomas

Sara Smith @smwordsmith.bsky.social · 1d

I have heard almost all of these pro-AI arguments at one point or another. I love these well-reasoned, thoughtful possible responses to each and every one of them. A much more academic way of saying, Kindly, Fuck Off.

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 5d

🌟 New preprint 🌟, by @olivia.science and me:

📝 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025). *Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists*. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧪

Table 1

Core reasoning issues (first column), which we name after the relevant numbered section, are characterised using a plausible quote. In the second column are responses per row; also see the named section for further reading, context, and explanations.

See paper for full details: ** Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 1d

this is not a bug, it is a feature

all of these companies have a fucking platform. that's because they are trying to replace direct human-human relationships with mediated human-platform-human transactions

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

“One of the negative consequences AI is having on students is that it is hurting their ability to develop meaningful relationships with teachers, the report finds. Half of the students agree that using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers.”

Rising Use of AI in Schools Comes With Big Downsides for Students

A report by the Center for Democracy and Technology looks at teachers' and students' experiences with the technology.

www.edweek.org

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 2d

The First Amendment explicitly guarantees:

-the right of the people peaceably to assemble
-to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
-the free exercise of religion
-freedom of speech

If this priest had also been press, ICE would have violated all five 1A freedoms at once.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 2d

Here’s video of the incident

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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 2d

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 2d

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Gavin Buckingham @drgbuckingham.bsky.social · 2d

When is work not work? What is the workiest work?

gavinbuckingham.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/w...

Work that isn’t counted as work

An interesting LinkedIn post from some colleagues musing on the “expectation of free service” has been stuck in my head for a few days now. In my university, we have a workload model wh…

gavinbuckingham.wordpress.com

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Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 2d

One question I have about such systems, how can we know what type of environmental footprint they leave? Some genAI is truly awful on that front and I would like to be informed before using anything like that.

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neongrey @neongrey.bsky.social · 3d

all discourse aside, there is one machine with consciousness. it's printers. they are alive and conscious and they hate you and they'd take your arm clean off if you let them. never trust a printer.

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Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 2d

I wonder if there is some kind of data on its success in this type of application.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 2d

google wants to introduce errors into my spreadsheets and attribute them to me

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Robin Thomas @drrobinthomas.bsky.social · 2d

I'm in that spot as well. Just got a newsletter from my univ with a number of workshop ads for how to integrate AI in your course curriculum - one of these from the director of our writing center. I need to find some time to put my own workshop together.

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Shahan Ali Memon @shahanmemon.bsky.social · 5d

The future of peer review is here.

Introducing Nature Instant!

We've automated rejection so you can get disappointed faster. Because why wait 6 months for reviewer 2 when you can get roasted by an #AI in seconds?

Here is how it works.

#AI4Science #PeerReview #FictionScience #FiSci #AAAI #ScAISci

Showing a fictitious system for submitting manuscripts called "Nature Instant" showing bot choices for authors to choose from as initial AI-based peer reviewers. The bots are trained on real human reviewer data.

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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 3d

Sora is not the real problem here. The real problem is that in 12, at most 24 months, there will be a Sora clone from Tencent or Alibaba that is just as good and can be run by anybody with a 5099, at which point everyone in society needs to rapidly agree to treat all digital video as fake, period.

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