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Ezekiel Williams

@ezekielwilliams.bsky.social

1.3K followers 1K following 98 posts

Math, Neuroscience, AI. PhD candidate at Mila and University of Montreal; also writes music and dreams of post-growth economies 🧠🪴🇵🇸 Website: https://computationalcognition.ca/author/

computationalcognition.ca

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Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · Mar 25

1/7: Super excited to share our new paper! This one should be of interest to neuroscientists and deep learning theory folks. This paper was a collaboration with Alexandre Payeur, @averyryoo.bsky.social, Thomas Jiralerspong, @mattperich.bsky.social, Luca Mazzucato, @glajoie.bsky.social

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Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · 16h

Highly recommend, to my AI research colleagues, the linked paper which we discussed today at the @mila-quebec.bsky.social Critical Science Reading Group. Importantly, it suggests ways that the AI research community can support our artist friends instead of harming them. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

AI Art and its Impact on Artists | Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

dl.acm.org

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Resist 🕎🍉 @antizionistjew.bsky.social · 7d

The Global Sumud Flotilla is being intercepted by the Israeli occupation forces in international waters. Pressure your government for the protection of Global Sumud Flotilla

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 10d

Just a head’s up that I’ve continued making updates to this guide: most recently, to remove the caveat on Here WeGo for not having CarPlay, adding Citymapper, and a suggestion to try the DVD/Blu-ray section at your local library as a streaming alternative. More to come!

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · Jul 18

Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump was a mask off moment and showed the world we can’t depend on US tech companies.

For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get off US tech and I put together a guide so you find alternatives too. I hope you find it helpful!

Getting off US tech: a guide

I’m in the process of dropping US tech services. Here’s how I did it, and options you should consider.

www.disconnect.blog

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 12d

Shameful that Canada’s ambassador didn’t walk out while a war criminal addressed the UN General Assembly.

Israel 'must finish the job' in Gaza, Netanyahu tells UN, after dozens walk out in protest | CBC News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday that Israel "must finish the job" against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing internatio...

www.cbc.ca

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Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 14d

The vibrant nightlife of NYC rats you’ve never heard—a project by @ralphpeterson.bsky.social & @zamakany.bsky.social 🐀🌆

The vast majority of what we know about rats comes from experiments. 🧪

The team at @basisresearch.bsky.social wondered how well those findings extrapolate to the real world.

🧵

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 13d

the kids are alright

Susan Kaye Quinn is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 @susankayequinn.bsky.social · 14d

They've lost the 9yos

JA Westenberg
@Daojoan@mastodon.social

My 9 year old and his classmates have started using “that’s AI” to mean “I don’t believe you.”

Me: we’re having dinosaur meat for dinner

Kiddo: that’s AI
Sep 24, 2025, 07:36 AM

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Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Marius Pachitariu @marius10p.bsky.social · 16d

New work from the lab, mismatch responses consistent with spatial but not temporal predictive coding theory.

Qingqing Zhang @qqzhang.bsky.social · 16d

Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

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Venki Murthy @neurovenki.bsky.social · 19d

(edited repost) Thrilled to see our computational work on adaptive shaping of behavior (we call it outcome-based curriculum learning) in PLoS Comp Biol! @wl-tong.bsky.social, @gautamreddy.bsky.social & I formalize curricula in any RL task that can be framed as sequential simple-to-complex behavior.

Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior

Author summary Animals are commonly trained by ‘shaping’ their behavior using a sequence of simpler tasks towards a complex behavior. Numerous schools of thought have proposed heuristics for shaping b...

journals.plos.org

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Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 19d

Three days after the UN inquiry declares "genocide" in Gaza the Carney government says they are still waiting for "all the evidence" before taking a stand.
What an epic moral failure.

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Nataliya Zadorozhna @cnd25.bsky.social · 18d

There‘a a consensus among experts-Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Canada, as party to Genocide Convention, is bound to act.This duty is not triggered by an authoritative determination of genocide but by the mere risk of genocide ICJ issued such risk warning on Jan’24
bsky.app/profile/hrw....

Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 19d

Three days after the UN inquiry declares "genocide" in Gaza the Carney government says they are still waiting for "all the evidence" before taking a stand.
What an epic moral failure.

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Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.bsky.social · 21d

You asked for it! We delivered Quack-O-Grams to our members of Congress urging them to #ImpeachRFK, and get that Quack out of office!

There's still time for you to get in on this fluffy, feathery action: Send your own duck at zurl.co/W1ZnB and keep the momentum going! 🦆

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Anne Urai 🟥 @anne-urai.bsky.social · Feb 10

Feeling like academia is in pretty bad shape? You're not alone.

@clarekelly.bsky.social and I previously wrote about the need to collectively rethink and reshape scientific practice: the academic doughnut. Read more at elifesciences.org/articles/84991

But, have these ideas changed anything? 👇

Doughnut academia.
Adapting the “doughnut” model of economics to the academic world enables us to visualize the inner social foundations that universities should provide, and the outer human and planetary boundaries that universities need to avoid overshooting. Note that the ordering of elements within the inner and outer rings is random; there is no direct pairing between foundations and ceilings.

Adapted from Raworth, 2017 under a CC-BY-SA license.

Seven ways to think like a 21st century scientist.
1. Change the goal: from a business that produces papers and graduated students, towards a university that works towards the inside space of the academic doughnut. 2. Get savvy with systems: from feeling like a cog in the university machine, towards being gardeners of our academic system. 3. See the big picture: from academics who look out over the world from their ivory tower, towards scholarship which accepts its own embeddedness in (and dependence on) society and the planet. 4. Create to regenerate: from a rat race where we tread water, towards “slow scholarship” that values community building, deep thinking and rest crucial for intellectual work. 5. Nurture human nature: from the lone genius, towards team science. 6. Design to distribute: from a funding system where the rich get richer, towards a fair distribution of opportunities and resources. 7. Be agnostic about growth: from a focus on increasing numbers of papers, citations and students, towards rebuilding trust in our own academic communities and with society.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 22d

This is long, but worth it. Some choice quotes:

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

>>

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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 24d

I think about this diagram a lot. This is a *simplified* schematic of *some of* the brain regions and circuits involved in behavioral control. (From: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)

A diagram showing dozens of brain regions densely interconnected by complicated loops

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Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 27d

“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute…These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart

Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

www.theguardian.com

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 28d

“Not only AI enthusiasts, but even some scholars whose expertise concentrates on identifying and critically interrogating ideologies and sociotechnical relationships (…) unfortunately fall prey to the teleological belief that AI is an unstoppable force.” — zenodo.org/records/1706...

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Climate News @climatenews.bsky.social · Sep 7

Medical doctors, humanitarian aid workers and volunteers from 140 countries, including Greta Thunberg, are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla sailing to take food and medicine to starving children in Gaza.

Italian dock workers unions will shut down European ports if the flotilla is stopped.

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · Sep 5

I am once again asking you to stop sending us money.

But we do need your time. ⏰

zohranfornyc.com/events

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · Sep 4

New from 404 Media: this company turns dashcams into 'virtual CCTV cameras'. Then hackers got in. Hacker accessed terabytes of users recordings. Includes a user driving to CIA entrance; others at U.S. military bases. Big tech also buying images from the cameras

www.404media.co/this-company...

This Company Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In

A hacker has compromised Nexar, which turns peoples' cars into "virtual CCTV cameras" that organizations can then buy images from. The images include sensitive U.S. military and intelligence facilitie...

www.404media.co

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Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · Aug 30

phenomenal work! Hoping this builds pressure to get the Broadview staging ground shut down

Rachel Cohen @cohen489.bsky.social · Aug 30

I got arrested yesterday! (real drop off from being a corporate law firm associate five months ago. or upgrade.)

I was blocking vehicles leaving from ICE’s Broadview, IL, staging ground and de facto detention center at 1930 Beach St. full statement (for now) below.

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · Aug 29

Yup. And not just philosophers. There is a whole breed of "AI Safety" researchers in CS who do the same SciFi nonsense and get enormous research funding. They got mad at me for calling them dorks complicit in death yesterday.

www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-...

The Banal Evil of AI Safety

Chatbot companies are harmful and dishonest. How can we hold them accountable?

www.argmin.net

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 27

Bluesky now the platform of choice for scientists and other non-fascists.

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

It’s not just you. Survey says: “Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky”…

arstechnica.com

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Dane Carnegie Malenfant @dvnxmvlhdf5.bsky.social · Aug 3

I am presenting this work at the @cocomarl-workshop.bsky.social part of @rl-conference.bsky.social Tuesday (: I additionally have a generalized correction term for n-arbitrary agents (it is like walking a tree for the order of gradients) that I am looking for thoughts, validations or critiques.

Dane Carnegie Malenfant @dvnxmvlhdf5.bsky.social · Jun 5

Preprint Alert 🚀

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) often assumes that agents know when other agents cooperate with them. But for humans, this isn’t always the case. For example, plains indigenous groups used to leave resources for others to use at effigies called Manitokan.
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Manitokan are images set up where one can bring a gift or receive a gift. 1930s Rocky Boy Reservation, Montana, Montana State University photograph. Colourized with AI

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David G. Clark @david-g-clark.bsky.social · Aug 25

(1/26) Excited to share a new preprint led by grad student Albert Wakhloo, with me and Larry Abbott: "Associative synaptic plasticity creates dynamic persistent activity."
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Associative synaptic plasticity creates dynamic persistent activity

In biological neural circuits, the dynamics of neurons and synapses are tightly coupled. We study the consequences of this coupling and show that it enables a novel form of working memory. In recurren...

www.biorxiv.org

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Ann Kennedy @antihebbiann.bsky.social · Aug 20

I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it!

Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Theoretical neuroscience has room to grow

Nature Reviews Neuroscience - The goal of theoretical neuroscience is to uncover principles of neural computation through careful design and interpretation of mathematical models. Here, I examine...

www.nature.com

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