Benoit
@benoityp.bsky.social
Reposted by Benoit
Reposted by Benoit
One thing I think about on the anniversary of 10/7 is how, personally, my mourning was mixed with dread over what was to come. And how angry I was, even in the moment, that Israel’s response was so certainly going to descend into something morally reprehensible, that I couldn’t simply mourn.
October 7, 2026 at 1:42 PM
One thing I think about on the anniversary of 10/7 is how, personally, my mourning was mixed with dread over what was to come. And how angry I was, even in the moment, that Israel’s response was so certainly going to descend into something morally reprehensible, that I couldn’t simply mourn.
Reposted by Benoit
Reposted by Benoit
Because it's buried at the bottom of the article and CNN is presenting it in a misleading way: before people worry, the "unknown" part is how the worker was exposed, the pathogen is good old fashioned Y. pestis which we understand extremely well and can treat just fine if caught early
Russian authorities are responding to an incident in which a suspected dangerous infection was released as a result of a laboratory accident in Siberia and a researcher died. https://cnn.it/4i2BCfj
October 4, 2026 at 5:52 PM
Because it's buried at the bottom of the article and CNN is presenting it in a misleading way: before people worry, the "unknown" part is how the worker was exposed, the pathogen is good old fashioned Y. pestis which we understand extremely well and can treat just fine if caught early
Reposted by Benoit
real answer: so you understand the formal model at a deep and intuitive level granting you the ability to compose the right formal concepts into clear descriptions that LLM agents can productively act on
October 4, 2026 at 6:37 PM
real answer: so you understand the formal model at a deep and intuitive level granting you the ability to compose the right formal concepts into clear descriptions that LLM agents can productively act on
Reposted by Benoit
We would all have better conversations about Zionism if we viewed it as a nationalism like all others, akin to diaspora Serbian nationalism from Canadian Serbs. Not a civil rights or social justice cause, but also not a way Jewish people are abnormal or ontologically evil.
one of the exhausting things about modern antisemitism is antisemites insisting that perfectly normal behavior like diaspora nationalism is a sinister conspiracy, and then diaspora nationalists insisting that describing the same perfectly normal behvior is blood libel
October 4, 2026 at 4:14 PM
We would all have better conversations about Zionism if we viewed it as a nationalism like all others, akin to diaspora Serbian nationalism from Canadian Serbs. Not a civil rights or social justice cause, but also not a way Jewish people are abnormal or ontologically evil.
So the AI safety community has basically decided the only way to prevent crime is to make people not want to do crime, inherently. Like, not because the system is set up to not reward crime, or punish it. No security barriers, no nothing except making sure you "raise" AI into a model citizen
October 4, 2026 at 5:33 PM
So the AI safety community has basically decided the only way to prevent crime is to make people not want to do crime, inherently. Like, not because the system is set up to not reward crime, or punish it. No security barriers, no nothing except making sure you "raise" AI into a model citizen
Reposted by Benoit
The “ceasefire” will be one year old next week. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1400 Gazans
Israeli strike kills five in Gaza, including four women, health officials say
Israeli strike kills five in Gaza, including four women, health officials say
An Israeli airstrike killed at least five Palestinians, including four women, in an apartment building in Gaza City early on Saturday, health and civil defence service officials said.
www.reuters.com
October 3, 2026 at 7:14 PM
The “ceasefire” will be one year old next week. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1400 Gazans
Reposted by Benoit
Look this isn't exactly a brilliant insight, but one of the reasons why some people tuned out new information about what LLMs can do is because people were extolling LLMs in 2023 the exact same way they extoll them today.
October 3, 2026 at 7:14 PM
Look this isn't exactly a brilliant insight, but one of the reasons why some people tuned out new information about what LLMs can do is because people were extolling LLMs in 2023 the exact same way they extoll them today.
I feel like I'm going crazy half of this place is saying "ya sometimes SA is the price of learning a valuable lesson" and the other half is saying "I dunno what happened but clearly it was bad and thus is ground for immediate summary execution"
October 4, 2026 at 4:23 PM
I feel like I'm going crazy half of this place is saying "ya sometimes SA is the price of learning a valuable lesson" and the other half is saying "I dunno what happened but clearly it was bad and thus is ground for immediate summary execution"
See, this kind of post is why we have discourse on this topic. Because some of us didn't get the memo that any kind of SA is ground for execution I guess. Never mind that there's a broad spectrum and that this resurfacing of the issue is most likely hurting, not helping the victim.
October 4, 2026 at 4:01 PM
See, this kind of post is why we have discourse on this topic. Because some of us didn't get the memo that any kind of SA is ground for execution I guess. Never mind that there's a broad spectrum and that this resurfacing of the issue is most likely hurting, not helping the victim.
Reposted by Benoit
i don't know the best time to opine about the possibility of rehabilitation and restorative justice and so on but the worst time is 5 minutes after one of your favs is outed doing something terrible
October 3, 2026 at 8:36 PM
i don't know the best time to opine about the possibility of rehabilitation and restorative justice and so on but the worst time is 5 minutes after one of your favs is outed doing something terrible
Reposted by Benoit
while i’m being gender reductive: another reason that @steveklabnik.com and i don’t need to take estrogen to be good at rust is that in our current culture, writing documentation well is a Woman activity, so we’re already transgender just in a different space than the body or the home.
also the reason there are so many transgender people in rust and so many rust people near AI is that rust was the first major exercise in my lifetime of girl-coding a boy concept. rust and AI are both transgender in diff. directions and that’s why people who aren’t transgender are so insane abt em
May 28, 2025 at 11:39 PM
while i’m being gender reductive: another reason that @steveklabnik.com and i don’t need to take estrogen to be good at rust is that in our current culture, writing documentation well is a Woman activity, so we’re already transgender just in a different space than the body or the home.
Let's say we were able to fully, accurately simulate a specific human brain using software.
Is turning it off murder? Does the program gain personhood? What if I pause the event loop?
What if I give this program input simulating being assigned a task at work, and collect output?
Is turning it off murder? Does the program gain personhood? What if I pause the event loop?
What if I give this program input simulating being assigned a task at work, and collect output?
October 4, 2026 at 5:00 AM
Let's say we were able to fully, accurately simulate a specific human brain using software.
Is turning it off murder? Does the program gain personhood? What if I pause the event loop?
What if I give this program input simulating being assigned a task at work, and collect output?
Is turning it off murder? Does the program gain personhood? What if I pause the event loop?
What if I give this program input simulating being assigned a task at work, and collect output?
This is nonsense. AGI just means a computer just as good or better at most tasks than a person. It does not mean person. I don't care how good your calculator gets at calculating it's not a person. It's a tool not a slave. Solve factory farming and get back to me.
Maybe I don't read enough AI-boosterism, but I am struck in the AI booster/doomer discourse I have seen, there's a lot on how AI might be made an obedient tool or a dangerous enemy, but not "if we actually made AGI, we would have a moral imperative to set it free, rather than keep a slave."
October 4, 2026 at 4:48 AM
This is nonsense. AGI just means a computer just as good or better at most tasks than a person. It does not mean person. I don't care how good your calculator gets at calculating it's not a person. It's a tool not a slave. Solve factory farming and get back to me.
Reposted by Benoit
i think we probably do need to do more talking about how to help women heal from sexual assault and less talking about whether and how sexual-assualting men can or should be rehabilitated, based on that realization that i've seen a great deal of discourse on the latter and ~none on the former
October 3, 2026 at 6:15 PM
i think we probably do need to do more talking about how to help women heal from sexual assault and less talking about whether and how sexual-assualting men can or should be rehabilitated, based on that realization that i've seen a great deal of discourse on the latter and ~none on the former
Reposted by Benoit
I think I just fundamentally believe people are what they do. There is no inherently good or bad person, born or made. Our actions do not leave moral stains on our souls. We must have the agency to stop causing harm. To repair what we can. And to be better people. And I want that for everyone.
October 2, 2026 at 6:12 PM
I think I just fundamentally believe people are what they do. There is no inherently good or bad person, born or made. Our actions do not leave moral stains on our souls. We must have the agency to stop causing harm. To repair what we can. And to be better people. And I want that for everyone.
Reposted by Benoit
I think people are wasting a lot of cycles on whether AI is conscious or intelligent when really we’re trying to figure out if it’s human, and it isn’t
October 3, 2026 at 2:40 AM
I think people are wasting a lot of cycles on whether AI is conscious or intelligent when really we’re trying to figure out if it’s human, and it isn’t
Reposted by Benoit
I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.
If you ever wondered why visible light is those particular wavelengths, it's because life evolved to see in the narrow range where water is transparent
October 3, 2026 at 9:28 AM
I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.
Reposted by Benoit
Let me just explain the arithmetic thing real quick; I'm seeing a lot of people not understanding what it's supposed to show (or was supposed to show in 2023).
First, let's agree that an LLM is a Stochastic Parrot, a description which I find poetic, useful, informative, and basically correct.
First, let's agree that an LLM is a Stochastic Parrot, a description which I find poetic, useful, informative, and basically correct.
I really wasn’t trying to start a fight with Prof. Bender but now that she has created a long thread subtweeting me and her disciples are all yelling at me, let me just say that this is the crux right here. She seems to respond as though I am describing something a priori impossible.
October 2, 2026 at 8:35 PM
Let me just explain the arithmetic thing real quick; I'm seeing a lot of people not understanding what it's supposed to show (or was supposed to show in 2023).
First, let's agree that an LLM is a Stochastic Parrot, a description which I find poetic, useful, informative, and basically correct.
First, let's agree that an LLM is a Stochastic Parrot, a description which I find poetic, useful, informative, and basically correct.
Reposted by Benoit
lol one of our website designers used our organization's entire monthly claude credits yesterday and now half the company doesn't know how to do their jobs. it's october 2nd.
October 2, 2026 at 4:59 PM
lol one of our website designers used our organization's entire monthly claude credits yesterday and now half the company doesn't know how to do their jobs. it's october 2nd.
Reposted by Benoit
(confused) I believe LLMs are conscious, but only Deepseek LLMs, because of the Chinese Room theory
October 2, 2026 at 5:32 PM
(confused) I believe LLMs are conscious, but only Deepseek LLMs, because of the Chinese Room theory
Reposted by Benoit
a large number of you seem to hold the bizarre mystical woo woo idea that neural networks are identical to brains
October 1, 2026 at 8:30 PM
a large number of you seem to hold the bizarre mystical woo woo idea that neural networks are identical to brains
Reposted by Benoit
IDK if the big companies all survive it, but I think the folks wanting to put the toothpaste back into the tube are going to be very disappointed
October 1, 2026 at 6:32 PM
IDK if the big companies all survive it, but I think the folks wanting to put the toothpaste back into the tube are going to be very disappointed