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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 10h

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 2d

This is one of my favorite interviews, especially about how two-year-old Thalo revealed to me the total awesomeness of garbage trucks

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See why here: templeton.org/news/what-ch...

What Children Can Teach Us About the Human Experience

templeton.org

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 5d

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine major universities “is extortion, plain and simple,” Erwin Chemerinsky writes in a guest essay. “It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it.”

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

There seems to be no limit to the president’s odious attempts to control higher education.

nyti.ms

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 9d

I suggested that play is an example where the metric maximized by adults in the ARC games (task completion) is precisely the metric minimized by children during play: the ideal imaginative play is never completed. "Success" is failure. Learning "efficiency" in this setting is irrelevant.

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 10d

You can see this particularly clearly in development where explore (children) and (exploit) adult intelligences are in clear tension, and the division of labor is necessary to resolve it. But its about learning versus acting, not just different skills
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

I argue that the evolution of our life history, with its distinctively long, protected human childhood, allows an early period of broad hypothesis search and exploration, before the demands of goal-di...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 12d

A good piece in the NYT that pairs well with my own recent post on "magical thinking" about AI.

NYT (gift link): www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

My post: aiguide.substack.com/p/magical-th...

Opinion | A.I. Isn’t Magic. Lots of People Are Acting Like It Is.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

John Herrman @jwherrman.bsky.social · 22d

OpenAI's "what is ChatGPT, anyway?" study is a little weird, sort of funny, but actually illuminating nymag.com/intelligence...

There are a few major caveats here. OpenAI's own researchers worked on the paper with Harvard economist David Deming under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research (in other words, the company is comfortable with this paper's findings). Additionally, the research, which is mostly an attempt to classify and sort a large set of messages, was done substantially by OpenAl's own models, which both automated the process and, the researchers say, helped preserve user anonymity. "No one looked at the content of messages while conducting analysis for this paper," the researchers claim, although they did validate their automations against human analysis used in smaller, previous studies we've talked about here before. The researchers' methodology is both fascinating and could insufficiently but not entirely inaccurately be characterized as: "We asked ChatT

The picture that emerges from this data matches this thesis pretty closely: ChatGPT, for many of its users, is a way to access, remix, summarize, retrieve, and sometimes reproduce information and ideas that already exist in the world; in other words, they use this one tool much in the way that they previously engaged with the entire web - arguably the last great "cultural and social technology" - and through a similar routine of constant requests, consultations, and diversions. One doesn't get the feeling from this research that we're careening toward uncontrollable superintelligence, or even imminent invasion of the workforce by agentic Al bots, but it does suggest users are more than comfortable replacing and extending many of their current online interactions
- searching, browsing, and consulting with the ideas of others - with an ingratiating chatbot simulation.

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

John Herrman @jwherrman.bsky.social · 22d

vindicating I think for @himself.bsky.social, @alisongopnik.bsky.social, et al, particularly the drift toward GPT-as-reference-librarian usage

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 26d

Understanding AI as a social technology
www.programmablemutter.com/p/understand...

Understanding AI as a social technology

Speed, shoggoths, social science

www.programmablemutter.com

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Nancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · Sep 7

Mark your calendars and tell your friends: No Kings 2.0 on October 18.
The sequel will be (and HAS to be) even bigger.

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Aug 24

Nice video of Laura Lewis et al.s paper on social curiosity in chimps and children, from our lab. Paper is here.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2024.2242

www.nbcbayarea.com/video/news/n...

Why it's good to be a little nosy, according to science

It’s not eavesdropping, it’s social curiosity. A new study on chimpanzees and children reveals that being interested in others is essential to who we are— and there’s a lot we can learn by leaning int...

www.nbcbayarea.com

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Aug 20

Humans usually extract info from these fictive agents (Zeus, Pooh, E. Bennett) without believing they're real. But in psychopathologies people treat fictive agents - saints, spirits, actors, celebrities - as real influences on their actions. Chat GPT is just the latest example.

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Aug 20

A picture that combines all of these. Gopnikism CT's often use fictional agents to convey info. These stories take advantage of Sperber human agent detection, and support Shanahan role-play. They are Weatherby like literary texts but work because they are grounded in the real external world.

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · Aug 18

Alvy is one of the good ones - I can't wait to listen to this conversation.

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · Aug 18

Mindscape 325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence. Many fun stories on the route to founding Pixar and making digital cinema. #MindscapePodcast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

Title card for Mindscape episode with Alvy Ray Smith.

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · Aug 18

www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang... Gopnikism, interactionism, structuralism and role play.

Large language models are cultural technologies. What might that mean?

Four different perspectives

www.programmablemutter.com

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Nora Newcombe @noranewcombe.bsky.social · Aug 17

Please sign! Science funding got strong support from the Senate but is now in the House! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

CE-Letter to Congress Requesting Protection of Science Funding in the FY26 Budget

To: The Honorable Members of the United States Congress Dear Honorable Senators and Representatives, We write in our individual capacities as U.S. citizens to urge you to prevent the far-reaching cons...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Cory Shain @coryshain.bsky.social · Aug 11

This is one of the best things I've listened to in a long time. Heroic team effort by Elizabeth Mynatt and @seanmcarroll.bsky.social to explain (with lots of examples) what the US is in the process of losing by gutting research. youtu.be/tm_EtHbqtQY?...

Mindscape 324 | Elizabeth Mynatt on Universities and the Importance of Basic Research

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript:…

youtu.be

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Nora Newcombe @noranewcombe.bsky.social · Aug 14

youtu.be/uE4X0MxJEcI

A conversation with Claudia Polsky about cancellation of grants

YouTube video by Biochemistry Channel

youtu.be

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Early Childhood Matters @ecm-vanleer.bsky.social · Aug 5

In July, we unpacked why we expect parents to do it all alone with leaders @elissastrauss.bsky.social @alisongopnik.bsky.social Alicia Lieberman & Karima Grant.

Full recording ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPph...

Subscribe to join future conversations ✍️ earlychildhoodmatters.online#subscribe

ECM Conversation Circle: Why do we expect parents to do it all alone?

YouTube video by Van Leer Foundation

www.youtube.com

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Jul 30

My newly updated and refreshed web-page, with our latest AI papers, all my WSJ columns, many new podcasts and much more. (My birthday present from Alvy Ray Smith, pretty cool to have the Pixar cofounder as your web designer).
www.alisongopnik.com

Alison Gopnik Homepage

7/29/2025

www.alisongopnik.com

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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · Jul 28

Kevin Roose and Casey Newton address critics who think they fuel AI hype on the Hard Fork Podcast. Some interesting exchanges, including with @alisongopnik.bsky.social about whether AI is a "cultural technology." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/p...
@kevinroose.com @caseynewton.bsky.social

Trump Fights ‘Woke’ A.I. + We Hear Out Our Critics

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Alison Gopnik

Many Minds podcast @manymindspod.bsky.social · Jul 24

Children are often cast as passive vessels into which we pour culture. But children create cultures of their own—vibrant ones with special properties.

Just one of the topics discussed in our recent episode with @dorsaamir.bsky.social & @sheinalew.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Jul 23

I'll be speaking at the first ever groundbreaking symposium on the cognitive science of caregiving , with terrific fellow speakers, at the Cognitive Science Society Meeting July 31

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Jul 22

This should really be great!

Noga Zaslavsky @nogazs.bsky.social · Jul 22

Super excited to have the #InfoCog workshop this year at #CogSci2025! Join us in SF for an exciting lineup of speakers and panelists, and check out the workshop's website for more info and detailed scheduled
sites.google.com/view/infocog...

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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · Jul 20

A fascinating podcast with Sheina Lew-Levy and Dorsa Amir about childhood across cultures, very insightful ideas about how contemporary Western parents could learn from forager childhoods, especially the importance of peer culture (read the Opies!).
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/v...

Varieties of childhood

Podcast Episode · Many Minds · 07/10/2025 · 1h 29m

podcasts.apple.com

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