Phil Steitz
@psteitz.bsky.social
Animal lover, trail runner, mathematician, product and tech leader, open source developer
Reposted by Phil Steitz
Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words.
But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.
But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.
I had five fascinating conversations for this RPS piece, gathering perspectives on genAI chatbots in games, as seen in Where Winds Meet. Thanks to @meghna.bsky.social, @pyrofoux.bsky.social, @maxkreminski.bsky.social, and @chrisgardiner.bsky.social www.rockpapershotgun.com/horrible-bor...
"Horrible", "boring", and "cheap": Experts pan new chatbot NPCs, but some leave room for optimism
We speak to a collection of developers and AI experts about the potential impact of LLM-powered NPCs in videogames.
www.rockpapershotgun.com
December 23, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words.
But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.
But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
Love this short opinion piece on “mechanical bypass” in analogy to “spiritual bypass”.
The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves | PNAS
The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves
www.pnas.org
December 21, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Love this short opinion piece on “mechanical bypass” in analogy to “spiritual bypass”.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
President Trump’s tariffs are taxes on American businesses and consumers.
Lather, rinse, repeat
Lather, rinse, repeat
Highly recommended!
"The Incidence of Tariffs: Rates and Reality" by Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman.
"...tariff pass-through to U.S. import prices is almost 100 percent, so the United States is bearing a large share of the costs."
bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/u...
"The Incidence of Tariffs: Rates and Reality" by Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman.
"...tariff pass-through to U.S. import prices is almost 100 percent, so the United States is bearing a large share of the costs."
bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/u...
December 20, 2025 at 8:20 PM
President Trump’s tariffs are taxes on American businesses and consumers.
Lather, rinse, repeat
Lather, rinse, repeat
Reposted by Phil Steitz
One of the things that make English an immensely interesting language, you can speak it, write it, use it at so many levels
Many English words stem from Latin.
But did you know there are Latin words that ended up in English two times - in two different forms? These are called doublets.
Over the next days, you'll see doublets in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Galician, Dutch, and English again.
But did you know there are Latin words that ended up in English two times - in two different forms? These are called doublets.
Over the next days, you'll see doublets in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Galician, Dutch, and English again.
December 19, 2025 at 7:39 PM
One of the things that make English an immensely interesting language, you can speak it, write it, use it at so many levels
Shows how these guys are just playing on a different level. Imagine how stupid retailers must feel that they could have been calling 2 for one sales 200% price reductions. Even just taking a penny off is a 100% cut.
FOX: If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to 0. If you cut it by 600%, the drug companies are actually paying you
LUTNICK: What he's saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring it down to $13, it's down 7 times
F: Not a 600% cut
L: But it's 700% higher price before. It's down 700% now
LUTNICK: What he's saying is if a drug was $100 and you bring it down to $13, it's down 7 times
F: Not a 600% cut
L: But it's 700% higher price before. It's down 700% now
December 19, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Shows how these guys are just playing on a different level. Imagine how stupid retailers must feel that they could have been calling 2 for one sales 200% price reductions. Even just taking a penny off is a 100% cut.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
I don't know how many times this needs to be said, but apparently a lot: If you are not in a position to verify the accuracy of some synthetic text, the synthetic text is not useful/has a high potential to be misleading.
This is one of those cases.
This is one of those cases.
The rationale I was given for AI Summaries *alongside* ordinary abstracts:
* The AI-generated summaries are intended to be more accessible to non-experts.
(1/3)
* The AI-generated summaries are intended to be more accessible to non-experts.
(1/3)
December 18, 2025 at 3:39 AM
I don't know how many times this needs to be said, but apparently a lot: If you are not in a position to verify the accuracy of some synthetic text, the synthetic text is not useful/has a high potential to be misleading.
This is one of those cases.
This is one of those cases.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
The title of this @davekarpf.bsky.social review runs through my head at least once a week.
They still haven’t thought any of this through.
They’re like kids building a block tower that’s obviously gonna fall over.
But it’s civilization.
Even in failure, they are doing so much senseless damage.
They still haven’t thought any of this through.
They’re like kids building a block tower that’s obviously gonna fall over.
But it’s civilization.
Even in failure, they are doing so much senseless damage.
The Tech Barons have a blueprint drawn in crayon. They have not thought any of this through.
A review of Balaji Srinivasan's book, The Network State.
open.substack.com
December 17, 2025 at 3:17 AM
The title of this @davekarpf.bsky.social review runs through my head at least once a week.
They still haven’t thought any of this through.
They’re like kids building a block tower that’s obviously gonna fall over.
But it’s civilization.
Even in failure, they are doing so much senseless damage.
They still haven’t thought any of this through.
They’re like kids building a block tower that’s obviously gonna fall over.
But it’s civilization.
Even in failure, they are doing so much senseless damage.
This is cool. One way to look at parameter change in NN training is as orbits in dynamical systems. Loss functions + training data induce basins of attraction. I would expect to see chaotic orbits near basin boundaries. Interesting to think about pre-images of these in training data.
While @lchoshen.bsky.social mentions linear connectivity being common, he doesn't mention that in practice, different finetuning seeds CAN lead to disconnected basins, which correspond to clusters of distinct OOD behaviors.
Linear Connectivity Reveals Generalization Strategies
It is widely accepted in the mode connectivity literature that when two neural networks are trained similarly on the same data, they are connected by a path through parameter space over which test set...
arxiv.org
December 13, 2025 at 7:45 PM
This is cool. One way to look at parameter change in NN training is as orbits in dynamical systems. Loss functions + training data induce basins of attraction. I would expect to see chaotic orbits near basin boundaries. Interesting to think about pre-images of these in training data.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
"Platform executives and their senior managers believed optimization was important, and they built internal reward structures that rendered it true. But this only lasted until they decided to discard it." YES. Excellent piece by @davekarpf.bsky.social davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-end-of...
The end of optimization
Some thoughts on a transition point in recent internet history,
davekarpf.substack.com
December 10, 2025 at 6:15 PM
"Platform executives and their senior managers believed optimization was important, and they built internal reward structures that rendered it true. But this only lasted until they decided to discard it." YES. Excellent piece by @davekarpf.bsky.social davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-end-of...
It is worth following this guy just to get these delightful book reviews
December 8, 2025 at 7:57 PM
It is worth following this guy just to get these delightful book reviews
Beautiful morning for a trot in the preserve.
December 7, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Beautiful morning for a trot in the preserve.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Interesting article in Nov TAS. Not surprising (pun intended), but interesting.
Interesting article in Nov TAS. Not surprising (pun intended), but interesting.
Bayesian Inference and the Principle of Maximum Entropy
Bayes’ theorem incorporates distinct types of information through the likelihood and prior. Direct observations of state variables enter the likelihood and modify posterior probabilities through co...
www.tandfonline.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:32 PM
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Interesting article in Nov TAS. Not surprising (pun intended), but interesting.
Interesting article in Nov TAS. Not surprising (pun intended), but interesting.
I’ve been hearing the words “these aren’t serious people” a lot recently. DJT, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kevin Hasset, Kristi Noem… It’s easy to point and laugh. But at some point we have to ask, are *we* serious people?
December 6, 2025 at 9:21 PM
I’ve been hearing the words “these aren’t serious people” a lot recently. DJT, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kevin Hasset, Kristi Noem… It’s easy to point and laugh. But at some point we have to ask, are *we* serious people?
Reposted by Phil Steitz
Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Both localized and distributed views on the functional organization of the brain have been put forward. In this Perspective, Rosen and Freedman examine the degree to which these two views account for ...
www.nature.com
December 4, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Phil Steitz
Crypto Leaders Call For Infusion Of 20 Million Dopes To Stabilize Market
Crypto Leaders Call For Infusion Of 20 Million Dopes To Stabilize Market
BOSTON—Stressing that the move would help keep digital currencies liquid through the coming year, crypto leaders called for an infusion of 20 million dopes Thursday to stabilize the market. “We’re cal...
theonion.com
December 1, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Crypto Leaders Call For Infusion Of 20 Million Dopes To Stabilize Market
Reposted by Phil Steitz
There’s an old saying, “Anything a computer can’t do yet is Artificial Intelligence. Everything the computer can already do is Machine Learning.”
One annoying part of the AI hype bubble is now they just call everything — the stuff computers do well and the stuff that doesn’t work at all — AI.
One annoying part of the AI hype bubble is now they just call everything — the stuff computers do well and the stuff that doesn’t work at all — AI.
you would be well served to pay attention when paul says this and it's also worth noting that the shoddy elf tit machine and the coding assistant machine are _different machines_. you can very much have one and not the other.
He’s right! You don’t have to use it—but it’s going to sweep through codeworld like a purifying fire. You may not care! But it’s not like when it draws you a bad picture of a large-breasted elf. It’s more like it shreds the foundation of what makes tech “valuable.”
November 30, 2025 at 6:17 PM
There’s an old saying, “Anything a computer can’t do yet is Artificial Intelligence. Everything the computer can already do is Machine Learning.”
One annoying part of the AI hype bubble is now they just call everything — the stuff computers do well and the stuff that doesn’t work at all — AI.
One annoying part of the AI hype bubble is now they just call everything — the stuff computers do well and the stuff that doesn’t work at all — AI.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
This is one advantage of having the historical memory of authoritarianism, as I have from Brazil: you know that, when the regime is gone, the people who collaborated and acquiesced look terrible in retrospect. It may look reasonable and justifiable now, but believe me, it will age like milk.
November 29, 2025 at 3:34 PM
This is one advantage of having the historical memory of authoritarianism, as I have from Brazil: you know that, when the regime is gone, the people who collaborated and acquiesced look terrible in retrospect. It may look reasonable and justifiable now, but believe me, it will age like milk.
Reposted by Phil Steitz
🧠👀
'These findings reveal high-dimensional aspects of cortical representation undetectable with conventional methods, such as RSA, & contradict previous theories suggesting that high-level visual cortex representations are low-dimensional.' #neuroskyence
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
'These findings reveal high-dimensional aspects of cortical representation undetectable with conventional methods, such as RSA, & contradict previous theories suggesting that high-level visual cortex representations are low-dimensional.' #neuroskyence
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Universal scale-free representations in human visual cortex
Author summary The human cerebral cortex is thought to encode sensory information in population activity patterns, but the statistical structure of these population codes has yet to be characterized. ...
journals.plos.org
November 27, 2025 at 10:35 PM
🧠👀
'These findings reveal high-dimensional aspects of cortical representation undetectable with conventional methods, such as RSA, & contradict previous theories suggesting that high-level visual cortex representations are low-dimensional.' #neuroskyence
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
'These findings reveal high-dimensional aspects of cortical representation undetectable with conventional methods, such as RSA, & contradict previous theories suggesting that high-level visual cortex representations are low-dimensional.' #neuroskyence
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Reposted by Phil Steitz
We have updated this list to include more than 500 packages and 700+ affected versions, as well as a technical analysis of the attack. socket.dev/blog/shai-hu....
cc: @campuscodi.risky.biz @typescript.fm @bleepingcomputer.com @theregister.com
cc: @campuscodi.risky.biz @typescript.fm @bleepingcomputer.com @theregister.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:19 PM
We have updated this list to include more than 500 packages and 700+ affected versions, as well as a technical analysis of the attack. socket.dev/blog/shai-hu....
cc: @campuscodi.risky.biz @typescript.fm @bleepingcomputer.com @theregister.com
cc: @campuscodi.risky.biz @typescript.fm @bleepingcomputer.com @theregister.com
Reposted by Phil Steitz
Engagement KPIs have been responsible for infinite scroll UI traps, RecSys radicalization spirals, public shame brigades, and basically every modern ailment novel to the past decade. At some point, you have to recognize that the problem isn't any one technology, it's the metric.
The company essentially turned a dial that made ChatGPT more appealing and made people use it more, but sent some of them into delusional spirals.
OpenAI has since made the chatbot safer, but that comes with a tradeoff: less usage.
OpenAI has since made the chatbot safer, but that comes with a tradeoff: less usage.
November 23, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Engagement KPIs have been responsible for infinite scroll UI traps, RecSys radicalization spirals, public shame brigades, and basically every modern ailment novel to the past decade. At some point, you have to recognize that the problem isn't any one technology, it's the metric.
At the end of a rainy run in the desert, here’s a happy thought: all the tanks are full for the wildlife!
November 23, 2025 at 7:17 PM
At the end of a rainy run in the desert, here’s a happy thought: all the tanks are full for the wildlife!
tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/...
““We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology,” Night Watch said. “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles.”
““We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology,” Night Watch said. “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles.”
Ukraine Is Jamming Russia's 'Superweapon' With a Song - Slashdot
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from 404 Media: The Ukrainian Army is knocking a once-hyped Russian superweapon out of the sky by jamming it with a song and tricking it into thin...
tech.slashdot.org
November 22, 2025 at 4:12 PM
tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/...
““We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology,” Night Watch said. “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles.”
““We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology,” Night Watch said. “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles.”
Reposted by Phil Steitz
IMO the only cybersecurity measure the US has ever had is its military. No major power would risk an actually destructive cyberattack on the US out of fear of a kinetic response. If it wasn't for that, it wouldn't be super difficult for someone to unravel the entire US economy at this point.
Breaking: The FCC has voted 2-1 along party lines to eliminate cybersecurity requirements for telecom companies that the commission adopted at the end of the Biden administration.
Telecoms had lobbied for the change. Democrats said it would invite another Salt Typhoon.
Story coming shortly.
Telecoms had lobbied for the change. Democrats said it would invite another Salt Typhoon.
Story coming shortly.
November 20, 2025 at 6:39 PM
IMO the only cybersecurity measure the US has ever had is its military. No major power would risk an actually destructive cyberattack on the US out of fear of a kinetic response. If it wasn't for that, it wouldn't be super difficult for someone to unravel the entire US economy at this point.