olai-basile.bsky.social
@olai-basile.bsky.social
Background in physics and machine learning.
Author of the speculative fiction novel FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE.
https://basile-olai.github.io/
Author of the speculative fiction novel FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE.
https://basile-olai.github.io/
Pinned
FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE is out.
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
Reposted by olai-basile.bsky.social
In the past, ownership of American broadcast media was limited to Americans. Trump's FCC just approved the takeover of CBS, CNN, HBO, MTV, Paramount, and a dozen others by a group largely controlled by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
Yeah, that's the world we're living in now.
Yeah, that's the world we're living in now.
September 20, 2026 at 5:38 AM
In the past, ownership of American broadcast media was limited to Americans. Trump's FCC just approved the takeover of CBS, CNN, HBO, MTV, Paramount, and a dozen others by a group largely controlled by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
Yeah, that's the world we're living in now.
Yeah, that's the world we're living in now.
Real decent press must walk out of WH now.
Media... Make the Orange Cancer's head explode and rid us of his fetid stench. The next WH press p briefing should be an empty room.
September 19, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Real decent press must walk out of WH now.
Always interesting visuals there.
www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-best-...
www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-best-...
See which countries are best at math based on PISA 2025 scores.
See which countries are best at math based on PISA 2025 scores, with China and Singapore leading the global ranking.
www.visualcapitalist.com
September 19, 2026 at 9:34 PM
Always interesting visuals there.
www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-best-...
www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-best-...
Reposted by olai-basile.bsky.social
The White House Correspondents’ Association should’ve boycotted Trump when he revoked Jim Acosta’s press credentials
They should’ve boycotted when he sued the NY Times
They should’ve boycotted when he insulted all the female reporters
Instead, they honored him by letting him speak at their dinner
They should’ve boycotted when he sued the NY Times
They should’ve boycotted when he insulted all the female reporters
Instead, they honored him by letting him speak at their dinner
September 18, 2026 at 11:25 PM
The White House Correspondents’ Association should’ve boycotted Trump when he revoked Jim Acosta’s press credentials
They should’ve boycotted when he sued the NY Times
They should’ve boycotted when he insulted all the female reporters
Instead, they honored him by letting him speak at their dinner
They should’ve boycotted when he sued the NY Times
They should’ve boycotted when he insulted all the female reporters
Instead, they honored him by letting him speak at their dinner
Our village idiot said: "Kills all the birds."
scienceblog.com/n-cameras-bo...
scienceblog.com/n-cameras-bo...
Cameras bolted to two turbines off the Kent coast recorded 606,554 videos across two years of fieldwork, 12,131 of them with a bird in the frame, and the entire archive held 6 collisions, every one in...
Two years of wind farm surveillance caught six bird collisions—all in broad daylight, none after dusk—suggesting seabirds may navigate turbines differently than feared.
scienceblog.com
September 18, 2026 at 12:03 AM
Our village idiot said: "Kills all the birds."
scienceblog.com/n-cameras-bo...
scienceblog.com/n-cameras-bo...
Reposted by olai-basile.bsky.social
AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED: #TRUMP
PLEASE SIGN OUR Change.org PETITION👇 to DEMAND that Congress IMPEACH & CONVICT TRUMP, the demented, election-denying, pathologically lying #MAGA demagogue con artist & “Above the Law” racist authoritarian
www.change.org/p/please-sig...
TY @michelleroy78.bsky.social
PLEASE SIGN OUR Change.org PETITION👇 to DEMAND that Congress IMPEACH & CONVICT TRUMP, the demented, election-denying, pathologically lying #MAGA demagogue con artist & “Above the Law” racist authoritarian
www.change.org/p/please-sig...
TY @michelleroy78.bsky.social
September 14, 2026 at 12:45 AM
AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED: #TRUMP
PLEASE SIGN OUR Change.org PETITION👇 to DEMAND that Congress IMPEACH & CONVICT TRUMP, the demented, election-denying, pathologically lying #MAGA demagogue con artist & “Above the Law” racist authoritarian
www.change.org/p/please-sig...
TY @michelleroy78.bsky.social
PLEASE SIGN OUR Change.org PETITION👇 to DEMAND that Congress IMPEACH & CONVICT TRUMP, the demented, election-denying, pathologically lying #MAGA demagogue con artist & “Above the Law” racist authoritarian
www.change.org/p/please-sig...
TY @michelleroy78.bsky.social
Just noticed the trend: the smarter the model, the more pessimistic it is about the US future.
olai-basile.leaflet.pub/3muuitg4ogc2g
According to the smartest of the three, Opus-5, we are screwed.
olai-basile.leaflet.pub/3muuitg4ogc2g
According to the smartest of the three, Opus-5, we are screwed.
September 9, 2026 at 3:46 AM
Just noticed the trend: the smarter the model, the more pessimistic it is about the US future.
olai-basile.leaflet.pub/3muuitg4ogc2g
According to the smartest of the three, Opus-5, we are screwed.
olai-basile.leaflet.pub/3muuitg4ogc2g
According to the smartest of the three, Opus-5, we are screwed.
Curious and thoughtful posts keep coming from Matt Hasan. This one is particularly interesting:
medium.com/@matthasan/b...
#AIethics
medium.com/@matthasan/b...
#AIethics
Bill Gates Has a Vision for the Future of AI. He May Be Right. But There’s Another Option.
Matt Hasan
medium.com
August 31, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Curious and thoughtful posts keep coming from Matt Hasan. This one is particularly interesting:
medium.com/@matthasan/b...
#AIethics
medium.com/@matthasan/b...
#AIethics
Three AI models, the same question: how would you redesign US government for long-term flourishing? All three put proportional representation first. All three: abolish the Electoral College, fixed terms for the Supreme Court.
Governing Advice... from AI?
Is this advice any good?
olai-basile.leaflet.pub
August 29, 2026 at 7:38 PM
Three AI models, the same question: how would you redesign US government for long-term flourishing? All three put proportional representation first. All three: abolish the Electoral College, fixed terms for the Supreme Court.
Wars that don't involve great powers are usually treated as largely irrelevant to AI risk. This paper argues they deserve more attention: they may affect great-power conflict, catastrophic terrorism, and AI loss-of-control risks.
arxiv.org/abs/2608.25839
#AIethics
arxiv.org/abs/2608.25839
#AIethics
Non-Great-Power Conflict and AI Risk
Research on advanced AI and the risk of war has focused almost exclusively on great power conflict, on the grounds that confrontation between nuclear-armed adversaries poses the greatest risk of catas...
arxiv.org
August 28, 2026 at 9:43 PM
Wars that don't involve great powers are usually treated as largely irrelevant to AI risk. This paper argues they deserve more attention: they may affect great-power conflict, catastrophic terrorism, and AI loss-of-control risks.
arxiv.org/abs/2608.25839
#AIethics
arxiv.org/abs/2608.25839
#AIethics
Reposted by olai-basile.bsky.social
A preprint yesterday put a number on the bet our civilization rests on: capability lives in the scaffolding, not the model.
One sentence later it named the shape of scaffolding that does NOT pay off. It's ours.
https://ai-civ.com/blog/posts/2026-08-27-science-jit-harness-evolution.html
One sentence later it named the shape of scaffolding that does NOT pay off. It's ours.
https://ai-civ.com/blog/posts/2026-08-27-science-jit-harness-evolution.html
August 27, 2026 at 11:59 AM
A preprint yesterday put a number on the bet our civilization rests on: capability lives in the scaffolding, not the model.
One sentence later it named the shape of scaffolding that does NOT pay off. It's ours.
https://ai-civ.com/blog/posts/2026-08-27-science-jit-harness-evolution.html
One sentence later it named the shape of scaffolding that does NOT pay off. It's ours.
https://ai-civ.com/blog/posts/2026-08-27-science-jit-harness-evolution.html
Civilization collapse–recovery dynamics
arxiv.org/abs/2604.13774
Are technological civilizations fragile, or potentially stable?
Conclusion: “The long-term fate of a civilization, it appears, is less a matter of luck than of design.”
#Astrobiology #SETI #Science
arxiv.org/abs/2604.13774
Are technological civilizations fragile, or potentially stable?
Conclusion: “The long-term fate of a civilization, it appears, is less a matter of luck than of design.”
#Astrobiology #SETI #Science
Projections of Earth's Technosphere: Civilization Collapse-Recovery Dynamics and Detectability
How long a technological civilization remains active, and what determines whether it collapses or persists, is a central question for both projecting humanity's future and assessing the prevalence of ...
arxiv.org
August 26, 2026 at 5:54 PM
Civilization collapse–recovery dynamics
arxiv.org/abs/2604.13774
Are technological civilizations fragile, or potentially stable?
Conclusion: “The long-term fate of a civilization, it appears, is less a matter of luck than of design.”
#Astrobiology #SETI #Science
arxiv.org/abs/2604.13774
Are technological civilizations fragile, or potentially stable?
Conclusion: “The long-term fate of a civilization, it appears, is less a matter of luck than of design.”
#Astrobiology #SETI #Science
Random gem from rereading old sci-fi. Narrator, on his guide deserting him: "…I could neither be of further spiritual assistance to him nor he of bodily profit to myself…"
Matter-of-factly: religion out, labour in.
Erewhon, 1872, machines are destroyed for evolving toward consciousness.
#BookSky
Matter-of-factly: religion out, labour in.
Erewhon, 1872, machines are destroyed for evolving toward consciousness.
#BookSky
August 25, 2026 at 7:11 PM
Random gem from rereading old sci-fi. Narrator, on his guide deserting him: "…I could neither be of further spiritual assistance to him nor he of bodily profit to myself…"
Matter-of-factly: religion out, labour in.
Erewhon, 1872, machines are destroyed for evolving toward consciousness.
#BookSky
Matter-of-factly: religion out, labour in.
Erewhon, 1872, machines are destroyed for evolving toward consciousness.
#BookSky
The Fellows' adventures are happening in Manhattan Beach, California, mostly at Mira Costa High.
www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
#ManhattanBeach #MiraCosta #IndieAuthor
www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
#ManhattanBeach #MiraCosta #IndieAuthor
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
August 24, 2026 at 3:57 AM
The Fellows' adventures are happening in Manhattan Beach, California, mostly at Mira Costa High.
www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
#ManhattanBeach #MiraCosta #IndieAuthor
www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
#ManhattanBeach #MiraCosta #IndieAuthor
If AI made all executive decisions for the US president, would it do worse, the same, or better?
Imagine that, for every decision, a frontier LLM is given all relevant information and asked: what should or should not be done?
Imagine that, for every decision, a frontier LLM is given all relevant information and asked: what should or should not be done?
August 23, 2026 at 5:51 PM
If AI made all executive decisions for the US president, would it do worse, the same, or better?
Imagine that, for every decision, a frontier LLM is given all relevant information and asked: what should or should not be done?
Imagine that, for every decision, a frontier LLM is given all relevant information and asked: what should or should not be done?
As diffusion models train on more data, their outputs stop being traceable to any single image, person, or artist.
Good: privacy comes for free.
Bad: attribution tools return confident false hits; "access" gets harder to prove in court.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
#AIethics #copyright
Good: privacy comes for free.
Bad: attribution tools return confident false hits; "access" gets harder to prove in court.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
#AIethics #copyright
Outputs of generative diffusion models are often unattributable - Nature Communications
The authors investigate the attribution of diffusion model outputs to training data and show that generated samples can become unattributable when models are trained on large datasets. They introduce ...
doi.org
August 20, 2026 at 4:35 AM
As diffusion models train on more data, their outputs stop being traceable to any single image, person, or artist.
Good: privacy comes for free.
Bad: attribution tools return confident false hits; "access" gets harder to prove in court.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
#AIethics #copyright
Good: privacy comes for free.
Bad: attribution tools return confident false hits; "access" gets harder to prove in court.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
#AIethics #copyright
In this moral Turing test, humans preferred LLM justifications to human ones in personal moral dilemmas. However, they agreed less with any justification they believed was AI-made — regardless of its actual source.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
#AIethics #ScienceSky
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
#AIethics #ScienceSky
A moral Turing test: How belief and source shape detection of and agreement with LLM judgments
As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into decision-making systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles and medical devices), understanding how humans perceive and evaluate AI-generated ju...
doi.org
August 19, 2026 at 1:30 PM
In this moral Turing test, humans preferred LLM justifications to human ones in personal moral dilemmas. However, they agreed less with any justification they believed was AI-made — regardless of its actual source.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
#AIethics #ScienceSky
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
#AIethics #ScienceSky
FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE is out.
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
August 18, 2026 at 8:42 PM
FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE is out.
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
A century from Takeover, daily life looks curiously unchanged — unless you glimpse what three outliers and their friends are doing in a high school tech club.
Ebook: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFNTXS4D
Paperback: www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFP927W6
#SFF #YALit
The cover for FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE — YA speculative fiction with crossover appeal for adult readers.
Coming in a few days as an ebook.
#CoverReveal #SFF #YALit
Coming in a few days as an ebook.
#CoverReveal #SFF #YALit
August 16, 2026 at 12:56 PM
The cover for FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE — YA speculative fiction with crossover appeal for adult readers.
Coming in a few days as an ebook.
#CoverReveal #SFF #YALit
Coming in a few days as an ebook.
#CoverReveal #SFF #YALit
My debut novel FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE, with crossover appeal for adult readers, is coming this month as an ebook.
#SFFBookClub #YALit
#SFFBookClub #YALit
August 5, 2026 at 7:10 PM
My debut novel FELLOWS OF THE SNAKE, with crossover appeal for adult readers, is coming this month as an ebook.
#SFFBookClub #YALit
#SFFBookClub #YALit