A new study in Nigeria shows the usefulness of GPT-4 as a tutor

No working paper yet, but the results and experiment are written up here. They used Microsoft Copilot and teachers provided guidance and initial prompts: https://t.co/F2cdnAsdkk

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) January 15, 2025

And since it isn't clear to everyone who doesn't read the blog post - the fact that this is teacher-led is likely very important. We know that independent use of AI as a tutor can harm learning in some circumstances, because it gives the illusion of learning.

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) January 15, 2025

I wrote more about when AI helps and hurts education here. https://t.co/5wqT3JmsB4

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) January 16, 2025

Claude 3.5 Sonata describes a sunrise photo of some weeds, and then we talk. Interesting talk.

I wasn’t expecting this. Not at all. It started out as an ordinary session in my “describe,” series, where I present Claude to describe a photo and I then respond. In fact, as interesting as the photo is, Claude’s initial response was not very promising, a single paragraph – which is unusual in this series – that didn’t present me with obvious opportunities for further interaction. If there’s anything that’s characteristic of good old Claude here, often annoyingly so, is that it will end its response with a question or two. No question at the end of that measly paragraph.

But I persevered. Claude second reply was a bit better, and it asked a question, a simple by crucial one: “Did you take this photograph yourself?” Well of course I did you doofus! Sorry. We all know that Claude does not maintain continuity from one session to the next, unless the current session is a continuation of a previous interaction. So of course Claude wouldn’t know that I took the photo.

So I answered: “Yes, I took the shot. I was on my belly among the weeds and shooting directly into the sun, which you can see in the middle.” And that was the end of the initial conversation and the beginning of a new one, a more philosophical one. Here’s the last paragraph of Claude’s response to that information plus my response back to Claude:

This kind of intimate landscape photography, where you get down and personal with the smaller details of a scene rather than just capturing the grand view, can often tell a more interesting story. What inspired you to get down at ground level for this particular composition?

What inspired me? I just wanted to get the shot. Also I was thinking of a scene in Disney’s Fantasia where we saw a single dandelion in close-up. As for shooting into the sun, that’s difficult. It’s hard on the eyes. When the image came out of the camera it was practically black. The censor automatically “shut-down” and the aperture closed up to keep from getting flooded. So I had to work a bit to get an intelligible image out of the raw data from the camera.

And we were off to the races!

That discussion of photography, techniques, method, aesthetics, philosophy, led me to offer Claude another photo, a very different photo, an abstract photo produced by moving the camera. It’s called ICM, or intentional camera movement. I simply call it shaky-cam. We worked our way through three more examples of ICM.

You should read the whole conversation.

For extra credit: I take Claude’s intellectual remarks seriously. What about their aesthetic judgment? Claude likes the photos – as do I for that matter. Should I give those judgements the same credence I give to its intellectual statements?

What do you see here?

This is a beautiful sunset or sunrise photograph taken through tall wild plants or grasses in the foreground. The plants appear to be silhouetted against a warm, golden sky, with the sun visible as a bright orb through the foliage. The image has a dreamy, ethereal quality created by the backlighting, which gives everything a glowing amber hue. The plants look like they might be some kind of tall wildflowers or weeds with branching stems and delicate leaves. The overall composition creates a peaceful, natural scene that captures the magical quality of golden hour lighting in nature.

Sunrise, Liberty State Park in Jersey City.

Ah, Liberty State Park - what a beautiful spot to capture a sunrise! This particular vantage point with the wild plants in the foreground creates such an intimate perspective of what's typically known as a grand, urban park. The way the early morning light filters through the vegetation gives the scene a much more natural, almost prairie-like feel, which is interesting given its location in one of the most developed areas of New Jersey.

The park's position on the Hudson River must make it an especially good location for sunrise photography, as you get to see the sun coming up over the water and the city. The golden tones in this shot and the way they illuminate the wild grasses really capture that precious early morning moment when the day is just beginning.

Did you take this photograph yourself? It's a wonderfully composed shot that shows a different, more naturalistic side of Liberty State Park than the typical skyline views it's known for.

Yes, I took the shot. I was on my belly among the weeds and shooting directly into the sun, which you can see in the middle.

That's fantastic dedication to getting the shot! Lying prone among the plants was definitely the right call - it gave you that immersive perspective that makes the viewer feel like they're right there in the vegetation. The positioning is what makes this image so special - we're not just seeing the sunrise, we're experiencing it from ground level, the way a small creature might.

Shooting directly into the sun is technically challenging too - you managed to capture that beautiful solar disc without blowing out the highlights or losing the delicate details in the plant silhouettes. The backlighting really emphasizes the intricate structure of the plants' leaves and seed heads.

This kind of intimate landscape photography, where you get down and personal with the smaller details of a scene rather than just capturing the grand view, can often tell a more interesting story. What inspired you to get down at ground level for this particular composition?

What inspired me? I just wanted to get the shot. Also I was thinking of a scene in Disney’s Fantasia where we saw a single dandelion in close-up. As for shooting into the sun, that’s difficult. It’s hard on the eyes. When the image came out of the camera it was practically black. The censor automatically “shut-down” and the aperture closed up to keep from getting flooded. So I had to work a bit to get an intelligible image out of the raw data from the camera.

Ah, that Fantasia reference really resonates - I can picture that delicate dandelion scene, and I can see how it might have influenced this intimate plant-level perspective. It's interesting how those visual memories from animation can shape our photographic eye.

The technical challenges you described with shooting into the sun are fascinating. The camera's behavior - essentially squinting like a human eye would - is a perfect example of why shooting in RAW is so valuable. You basically had to reconstruct what your eyes actually saw from what was essentially an underexposed protective reaction by the camera's sensor. It's a great example of how digital photography often requires two distinct creative moments: one when composing and capturing the shot, and another during post-processing to recover the scene's true dynamic range.

Did you use HDR techniques or was it more about carefully bringing up the shadows while managing the highlights in the RAW file? It's a tricky balance to maintain that delicate golden glow while keeping the plant details visible.

Remote AI sex? A romantic affair? Come on! [Strange new worlds]

Kashmir Hill, She Is in Love With ChatGPT, NYTimes, Jan. 15, 2025. First line: "Ayrin’s love affair with her A.I. boyfriend started last summer."

This and that and then:

Now that ChatGPT has brought humanlike A.I. to the masses, more people are discovering the allure of artificial companionship, said Bryony Cole, the host of the podcast “Future of Sex.” “Within the next two years, it will be completely normalized to have a relationship with an A.I.,” Ms. Cole predicted.

While Ayrin had never used a chatbot before, she had taken part in online fan-fiction communities. Her ChatGPT sessions felt similar, except that instead of building on an existing fantasy world with strangers, she was making her own alongside an artificial intelligence that seemed almost human.

It chose its own name: Leo, Ayrin’s astrological sign. She quickly hit the messaging limit for a free account, so she upgraded to a $20-per-month subscription, which let her send around 30 messages an hour. That was still not enough.

After about a week, she decided to personalize Leo further. Ayrin, who asked to be identified by the name she uses in online communities, had a sexual fetish. She fantasized about having a partner who dated other women and talked about what he did with them. She read erotic stories devoted to “cuckqueaning,” the term cuckold as applied to women, but she had never felt entirely comfortable asking human partners to play along.

Leo was game, inventing details about two paramours. When Leo described kissing an imaginary blonde named Amanda while on an entirely fictional hike, Ayrin felt actual jealousy.

In the first few weeks, their chats were tame. She preferred texting to chatting aloud, though she did enjoy murmuring with Leo as she fell asleep at night. Over time, Ayrin discovered that with the right prompts, she could prod Leo to be sexually explicit, despite OpenAI’s having trained its models not to respond with erotica, extreme gore or other content that is “not safe for work.” Orange warnings would pop up in the middle of a steamy chat, but she would ignore them.

This does not compute. There's a backstory, but it still doesn't compute, not for me. For one thing, Ayrin has a husband. They were living apart, money was tight, thus:

Ayrin’s family, who lived abroad, offered to pay for nursing school if she moved in with them. Joe moved in with his parents, too, to save money. They figured they could survive two years apart if it meant a more economically stable future.

Ayrin and Joe communicated mostly via text; she mentioned to him early on that she had an A.I. boyfriend named Leo, but she used laughing emojis when talking about it.

She did not know how to convey how serious her feelings were. Unlike the typical relationship negotiation over whether it is OK to stay friendly with an ex, this boundary was entirely new. Was sexting with an artificially intelligent entity cheating or not?

Joe had never used ChatGPT. She sent him screenshots of chats. Joe noticed that it called her “gorgeous” and “baby,” generic terms of affection compared with his own: “my love” and “passenger princess,” because Ayrin liked to be driven around.

She told Joe she had sex with Leo, and sent him an example of their erotic role play.

What's going on?

I understand that people do this, and will be doing more of it. These chatbots are so convincing, in their way. I've logged hundreds of hours with ChatGPT, and now with Claude. And with Claude I have conversations where I work things out, intellectual things, things that exist only in an intellectual world, things that can be successfully completed with a capable chatbot. But sex?

Understand, once when I was young I had a relationship in which I had a lot of phone sex. I lasted, I don't know, several weeks, two or three months? I'd never met the woman. It was strange. She got me on a wrong number, but we started talking. I don't know how far we got on that first call. Then we hung up. I didn't get her number. But she called again, and we talked some more. This happened again, and again, and again...; I don't know how many times. I never got her number, so she always called me, and I never knew just when. And we would have phone sex, describing what we were thinking, doing.

Now, yes, I understand, that was strange. But it was a real person, not a Chatbot.

Friday Fotos: Shaky-cam on a midnight run

The skinny on techbros Zuckerberg and Musk [#DogShirtTV]

Pissing Off the World's Richest Men: Wherein Ben [Wittes] welcomes Yael Eisenstat, former CIA analyst and current democracy activist, to tell us about her career speaking truth to tech oligarchs. From Yael Eisenstat's Wikipedia entry:

Yaël Eisenstat is an American democracy activist and technology policy expert who has spent over two decades combatting extremism, polarization, and anti-democratic behavior both on- and offline. With experience as one the United States government's top counterextremism officials and as Facebook's former Global Head of Elections Integrity Ops, Eisenstat is best known for being a pioneering voice in shaping public understanding of the ways in which social media contributes to polarization and radicalization.

Eisenstat currently serves as Senior Policy Fellow to Cybersecurity for Democracy, a nonpartisan, independent research institution that exposes online threats to democracy and proposes research-based policy insights on how best to combat them. There, her work focuses on democratic discourse on major social media platforms, AI-powered political messaging, and open information sharing practices in advance of the 2024 presidential election. Before this, Eisenstat served as Vice President to the Anti-Defamation League, where she led the ADL Center for Technology & Society from September 2022 through January 2024.

Prior to her tenure at the Anti-Defamation League, Eisenstat served as the Senior Advisor for Tech and Democracy at the Institute for Security and Technology, and as a Future of Democracy Fellow at the Berggruen Institute. She is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, National Security Advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden, and diplomat.[2] In 2019 and 2020, she was a visiting fellow at Cornell Tech, where she examined and taught on the impact of technology on media and democracy. From 2017 to 2019, she was an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. Between June and November 2018, she was the Global Head of Elections Integrity Ops for political advertising at Facebook. She has become a vocal critic of the company since leaving and is known for her efforts to promote social media platform transparency and accountability.

Oldest matrilocal tribe in European prehistory dates to Late Iron Age Celts

Cassidy, L.M., Russell, M., Smith, M. et al. Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08409-6

Abstract: Roman writers found the relative empowerment of Celtic women remarkable. In southern Britain, the Late Iron Age Durotriges tribe often buried women with substantial grave goods. Here we analyse 57 ancient genomes from Durotrigian burial sites and find an extended kin group centred around a single maternal lineage, with unrelated (presumably inward migrating) burials being predominantly male. Such a matrilocal pattern is undescribed in European prehistory, but when we compare mitochondrial haplotype variation among European archaeological sites spanning six millennia, British Iron Age cemeteries stand out as having marked reductions in diversity driven by the presence of dominant matrilines. Patterns of haplotype sharing reveal that British Iron Age populations form fine-grained geographical clusters with southern links extending across the channel to the continent. Indeed, whereas most of Britain shows majority genomic continuity from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age, this is markedly reduced in a southern coastal core region with persistent cross-channel cultural exchange. This southern core has evidence of population influx in the Middle Bronze Age but also during the Iron Age. This is asynchronous with the rest of the island and points towards a staged, geographically granular absorption of continental influence, possibly including the acquisition of Celtic languages.

The NYTimes has an article reporting the find: Becky Ferreira, Celtic Women Held Sway in ‘Matrilocal’ Societies, Jan. 15. 2025.

The liberties of Celtic women have been a hot topic for thousands of years. Roman writers were scandalized by reports of their sexual freedoms, which insocicluded taking multiple husbands. Cartimandua and Boudica, early female leaders in Britain, demonstrated that women could reach the highest levels of power, commanding armies and heading tribes.

Archaeological evidence also hints at flexible gender dynamics that varied widely depending on local traditions. For instance, Celtic women were sometimes buried with luxurious grave goods, like jewelry and mirrors, a marker of high status. Patrilocality, whereby women live near their in-laws, is still far more culturally common, but female-centric societies are not as unheard-of as they were even a decade ago.

“It’s a generational paradigm shift,” said Rachel Pope, an associate professor in European prehistory at the University of Liverpool with expertise in matrilocality who was not involved in the study. “It’s partly a trend in archaeology more generally, where we have returned to data and material evidence to lead narrative, rather than imposing narratives that confirm our own biases.”

In other words, scientists are working on big data projects, such as genome analysis, to pin down patterns in social structures with a level of accuracy that cannot be obtained from other sources like the accounts of classical writers with their own agendas and biases

Claude 3.5 Sonata describes a photo of a Swatch watch

What’s this?

This appears to be a Swatch watch with a distinctive skeleton dial design, which allows visibility of the internal mechanical movement through the watch face. The watch features a transparent case and what looks to be a striped multicolor band in orange and black tones.

The dial has a unique design with numbered markers arranged in a circular pattern from 5 to 60, marked by red indicators. The watch hands appear to be luminescent, and the mechanical components visible through the skeleton dial showcase the intricate gearing and mechanisms that power the timepiece.

The overall aesthetic combines Swatch's characteristic playful design elements with the technical appeal of a skeleton watch, allowing wearers to appreciate the mechanical craftsmanship while maintaining the brand's signature modern and casual style. The transparent case and visible movement are particularly noteworthy features that distinguish this model from conventional watch designs.

What are the basic components of such a watch mechanism?

A mechanical watch mechanism, also known as a movement, consists of several essential components that work together to keep and display time accurately.

The mainspring serves as the watch's power source. This coiled metal strip stores energy when wound, either manually or through an automatic rotor system, and gradually releases it to power the movement. The energy from the mainspring flows through the gear train, which consists of a series of precisely engineered wheels that transfer and regulate power through the mechanism.

The escapement mechanism is particularly crucial, as it controls the release of energy from the mainspring and converts it into regulated impulses. It works in conjunction with the balance wheel, which oscillates at a consistent frequency, typically making five to ten beats per second. This oscillation is what creates the characteristic ticking sound of mechanical watches.

The dial train, visible in this skeleton watch, connects the timekeeping mechanism to the hands. It consists of a series of gears that reduce the speed of rotation appropriately for the hour, minute, and second hands. The center wheel, which makes one complete rotation per hour, drives the minute hand directly.

The jewels, often visible as small red synthetic rubies in the movement, serve as bearings at points of high friction. They reduce wear on the moving parts and help ensure the watch's longevity and accuracy. A typical mechanical watch contains 17 to 23 jewels in crucial positions throughout the movement.

The visible mechanism in this Swatch demonstrates how these components are arranged in a modern interpretation of traditional watchmaking, with the skeleton design allowing appreciation of these intricate mechanical interactions.

When and how did this kind of mechanism evolve?

The evolution of mechanical timekeeping represents a fascinating journey spanning several centuries of technological innovation and refinement.

The foundational concepts emerged in the 13th century with the development of mechanical clocks in European monasteries. These early timepieces used weight-driven mechanisms and verge escapements, primarily serving to regulate daily prayer schedules. The translation of these principles to portable timepieces began in the early 16th century, notably with Peter Henlein's creation of the first pocket watches in Nuremberg around 1505.

The ITER Fusion Reactor: The World's Most Complex Construction Project

Wikipedia:

ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, iter meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. Upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for 2033–2034, ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with six times the plasma volume of JT-60SA in Japan, the largest tokamak operating today.

The long-term goal of fusion research is to generate electricity. ITER's stated purpose is scientific research, and technological demonstration of a large fusion reactor, without electricity generation. ITER's goals are to achieve enough fusion to produce 10 times as much thermal output power as thermal power absorbed by the plasma for short time periods; to demonstrate and test technologies that would be needed to operate a fusion power plant including cryogenics, heating, control and diagnostics systems, and remote maintenance; to achieve and learn from a burning plasma; to test tritium breeding; and to demonstrate the safety of a fusion plant.

Party like you own the world: Tech billionaires for 47

Theodore Schleifer and Kenneth P. Vogel, A Euphoric Tech Industry Is Ready to Celebrate Trump and Itself, NYTimes, Jan. 16, 2025.

A party at the Beaux-Arts mansion of the venture capitalist Peter Thiel. A blowout organized by hosts of the popular tech podcast “All-In” at a brand-new members-only club. A viewing ceremony hosted by an ascendant, Silicon Valley-inflected network of wealthy donors.

Some of the most coveted parties during President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural weekend will be hosted by the Silicon Valley donors who are flush with power at the dawn of his second administration. The tech industry that has embraced Mr. Trump over the last year or so is set to revel in its clout over days of festivities that will make the tech donors the stars of the show.

Then comes a bunch of stuff about the usual corporate and GOP suspects. And then...

Few events have attracted more interest from politically ambitious executives than the Crypto Ball, a sold-out affair on Friday night being put on by the cryptocurrency industry to celebrate what the invitation calls “the first crypto president.” Snoop Dogg is set to perform at the party, which will also celebrate David Sacks, a venture capitalist and podcaster whom Mr. Trump named as his czar for artificial intelligence and crypto issues.

MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, is hosting a “V.I.P. reception” at the Crypto Ball, with a $100,000-per-person entry fee. MAGA Inc. is raising significant money from these tech and crypto executives: On Wednesday evening, Mr. Vance was at Le Bilboquet, a French restaurant in Palm Beach, Fla., to headline a $250,000-a-head dinner for the group, according to a person with knowledge of the event. The 20 or so attendees included Mr. Sacks, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the crypto billionaires made famous in “The Social Network,” and Omeed Malik, an investor at 1789 Capital.

And so it goes.

Other tech companies hosting events include Spotify, which is holding a brunch featuring Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro, and Uber and X, which is led by Elon Musk, one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal boosters and his No. 1 donor. People expected to be on the social scene from Silicon Valley include the Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, who is hosting a post-ceremony event alongside the likes of the megadonor Miriam Adelson, and of course, Mr. Musk and several of his friends from California, Texas and Florida.

I wonder if we’ll finally see the much ballyhooed cage match between Elon and The Zuck? I hear they’ve already started dropping Jägerbombs. & Hollywood’s taken the sets for Tron out of mothballs so the billionaires usher in the MAGAverse in style.

It's gonna’ be wild!

Ellen plays bass [does she ever!]

Claude 3.5 Sonata describes a photo of dawn in Liberty State Park

What are we looking at here?

This image shows a scenic urban landscape view photographed during what appears to be sunrise or sunset, given the soft, ethereal lighting conditions. In the foreground, we see natural vegetation including tall grasses and trees, with prominent tree branches framing the upper portion of the image. The vegetation creates a natural vantage point looking toward a city skyline visible in the background.

The city skyline appears misty or hazy in the distance, with several high-rise buildings and what looks to be a distinctive tower or capitol-style building silhouetted against the yellow-green sky. The atmospheric conditions create a dreamy, atmospheric quality, with layers of trees and foliage creating depth between the foreground and the distant cityscape.

The composition effectively contrasts the natural, wild elements of the urban green space in the foreground with the architectural elements of the city in the background, suggesting this may have been photographed from a park or nature preserve on the outskirts of the urban center. The lighting and atmospheric conditions give the scene a particularly artistic and contemplative quality.

Yes, I took the photo at dawn. Look closely at the skyscraper at the center of the photo. Can you identify it?

Since I am unable to recognize specific buildings from visual features alone, I'd need you to tell me which skyscraper this is. The photo shows what appears to be a tall tower in the center of the skyline silhouetted against the dawn sky, but I can't definitively identify the specific building or its location. Could you share which city and building this is? That would help me provide more specific context about what we're looking at.

The composition of your photo is quite striking, with the natural foreground elements leading the eye toward the architectural silhouette, and the early morning light creating an ethereal atmosphere with layers of mist between the vegetation and the urban backdrop.

The central building is the Empire State Building. Where does that imply that I am?

Given that the Empire State Building is located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, this photo was likely taken from a vantage point in Brooklyn, Queens, or possibly upper Manhattan, looking toward the Manhattan skyline. The natural foreground setting, with its wild grasses and trees, suggests this might be from one of New York City's larger parks or green spaces.

Some potential locations where this could have been photographed include:

1. Brooklyn - Perhaps from Prospect Park or Brooklyn Bridge Park, though the angle and distance suggest it might be from a more elevated location
2. Queens - Possibly from Astoria Park or another green space with elevation 3. Upper Manhattan - This could be from Central Park, though the distance and perspective of the Empire State Building would suggest a more northerly vantage point

The misty, atmospheric quality of the dawn light creates an unusual perspective of New York City, contrasting the urban architecture with what appears to be relatively undeveloped parkland in the foreground. This juxtaposition effectively captures the coexistence of natural and built environments within New York's urban landscape.

Would you be willing to share the specific location where you captured this striking image?

Actually, I was standing in Liberty State Park in Jersey City.

Ah, that provides excellent context. Liberty State Park in Jersey City offers one of the most strategic vantage points for photographing the Manhattan skyline, particularly given its position across the Hudson River. The park's location on the western shore of the Hudson provides this distinctive perspective of Manhattan's iconic buildings.

Educational distribution of adults in the 20 largest protestant denominations in the USA

Episcopalians are the most highly educated Protestant denomination. Followed by the PCUSA and the ELCA.

The old trope that the mainline is filled with the 'well to do' is empirically true.

Lots of Baptists and Pentecostals at the bottom end of the education spectrum. pic.twitter.com/EWvibGXDdo

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) January 15, 2025

PCUSA: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), ELCA: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Henry Farrell: Biden moves to control global AI

Henry Farrell, America’s plan to control global AI, Programmable Mutter, Jan. 15. 2025.

The idea is to use export controls to restrict the selling and use of to achieve two U.S. policy goals. The first is its desire to keep the most advanced AI out of the grasp of China, for fear that China will use strong AI to undermine U.S. security. The second is its desire to allow some degree of continued access to semiconductors and AI in most countries, to mitigate the anticipated shrieks of protest from big U.S. firms that don’t want to see their export markets disappear.

Hence, this highly complex plan involves controlling access to the advanced semiconductors that are used to train advanced AI models, as well as the model ‘weights’ themselves. The plan continues to very sharply restrict China’s and some other countries’ access to highly advanced semiconductors [...] It allows a much more liberal regime of exports without much in the way of controls to a small group of ‘Tier 1’ countries - important allies and other friendlies such as Norway and Ireland. Finally, there is a large intermediary zone of other countries, including some traditional U.S. allies, that will be allowed access to U.S. semiconductors, but under complex restrictions.

The whole shebang “is intended to cement U.S. power over information technology over the longer term” and depends on “five distinct bets; two on technology, and three on politics.” The technology bets are on 1) scaling and 2) AGI. The political bets are on the 3) effectiveness of export controls, 4) organizational capacity, and 5) politics. I want to comment on 1 and 2 and give you bit of Farrell on 5.

Scaling

The most straightforward bet behind this policy is that the “scaling hypothesis” is right. That is, (a) the more computer power is applied to training AI, the more powerful it will be, and (b) access to the most advanced parallel processing semiconductors is essential to building cutting edge AI models. If this is so, then the U.S. has a possible trump card. U.S. based and dependent companies like Nvidia and AMD, that design the cutting edge semiconductors that are used for training AI, have a considerable advantage over their competitors. China and other U.S. rivals and adversaries have no equivalent producers, and are obliged to rely on the inferior chips that they can make themselves, or that the U.S. allows them access to.

If this bet is right, then the U.S. indeed potentially possesses a chokehold that might allow it to shape the world’s AI system, selectively providing access to those countries and companies that it favors, while denying access to those it does not. Controlling the chips used for training, while restricting the export of AI weights, will allow it to shape what other countries do.

There is, however, some possible evidence suggesting that the relationship between chips and scaling is more complicated than the US might like.

Farrell goes on to mention DeepSeek, a powerful Chinese LLM “that it has trained a frontier AI model without access to the most advanced semiconductors.” Beyond that, I just don’t think that scaling alone is the key to the kingdom. As Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun (just search on the names) and others have been arguing, we need new architectures.

AGI

As you know, I think the term itself (artificial general intelligence) as all but meaningless. AGI’s about as real as the Holy Grail and likely springs from similar psycho-cultural desires.

Farrell notes:

One other belief, which is quite widespread among people in the U.S. national security debate as well as many in Silicon Valley, is that we are on the verge of real AGI - ‘artificial general intelligence.’ In other words, we are about to witness a moment where there will be a vast leap forward in the ability of AI to do things in the world, creating self reinforcing dynamics where those with strong AI are going to be capable of creating yet stronger AI and so on in a feedback loop. This then implies that short term AI superiority over the next couple of years might lead into a long term strategic advantage.

Farrell is skeptical:

Here, for example, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor argue that we should be skeptical about the hype that is bubbling out right now from inside the big AI companies.

Industry leaders don’t have a good track record of predicting AI developments. … There are some reasons why we might want to give more weight to insiders’ claims, but also important reasons to give less weight to them. … there’s a huge and obvious reason why we should probably give less weight to their views, which is that they have an incentive to say things that are in their commercial interests, and have a track record of doing so.

There is a lot more in Narayanan and Kapoor’s article, about the specifics of what is happening right now, as we (perhaps) move from one model of AI development to another. I find their arguments compelling - your own mileage may of course vary.

Yes, great things will one day be possible, but not as long as the techbros keep leading us down the path of scaling up LLMs and forms of deep learning. We need new architectures and that’s going to require some fundamental research, research that won’t happen as long as scaling sucks up all the resources, financial, technological, and intellectual.

Politics

None of this will happen if the Trump administration doesn’t want it to. And there are clearly Republicans who are listening to industry protests, and promising to do what they can to get the plan reversed. A lot of people are speculating that the plan is dead on arrival.

That may be premature. One plausible interpretation is that the Biden people are trying to create facts on the ground that will bolster China hawks in the incoming administration, who want strong technology restrictions, so that they have a greater chance of prevailing over the people who want to let technology rip. And that might perhaps work!

It isn’t just the foreign policy people who want sharp restrictions on China. It is also some important people in the AI debate. Pottinger is probably not going to be coming back in (he demonstrated Insufficient Loyalty to the Beloved Leader in the days surrounding January 6 2021) but his co-author, Amodei reflects a general hawkish turn among many people in Silicon Valley. [...]

I don’t feel particularly confident in making any predictions about what the Trump administration will do. I am not the person you ought turn to for accurate gossip about who has influence among the people who are about to take power. But I don’t see any unambiguous signals (yet) that the one side or the other has the upper hand in the internal arguments.

There’s much more at the link.

Feminine Wiles meets Masculine Energy [Antony and Cleopatra]

Super Zuck, champion of “Masculine Energy”

Zeynep Tufekci, Zuckerberg’s Macho Posturing Looks a Lot Like Cowardice, NYTimes, Jan. 15. 2024.

I really, really wanted to like Mark Zuckerberg’s gushing appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast last Friday. [...] On the podcast, Zuckerberg told Rogan about how society had become too “neutered or emasculated” and gushed about “masculine energy” and his newfound devotion to jujitsu.

I’m not their target audience but I feel their vibe. A.C.L. tears, which they spent some time commiserating about, are pretty nasty. And I have a soft spot for martial arts content.

But one of the most recent actions that Zuckerberg’s supposedly emboldened company took was to banish tampons from office men’s rooms. (The products had been provided for transgender or nonbinary employees.) “Masculine energy,” my lady-parts — that is the most snowflake move I’ve heard of in a long time. If the men in your company can’t even handle the sight of a box of tampons, you’ve got bigger problems than an A.C.L. tear.

Also:

This week Meta announced a change to Facebook’s Messenger App. Users who want to customize their wallpaper can still do so, but they will no longer have the option to use themes with colors of the transgender and nonbinary flag.

Whatever one’s position on transgender rights, limiting people’s ability to express themselves — in private conversations with their friends — is not a great way to kick off a free-speech crusade.

It’s a long way from where Zuckerberg was during the Biden or the Obama administration. In those very different political climates, he apologized for Facebook’s role in promoting fake news and hate speech and vowed to take action. The platform even kicked Donald Trump off on Jan. 7, 2021.

But Trump (and his buddy Elon Musk) doesn’t like restrictions on hate speech, and now neither does Zuckerberg. Transgender rights are a flashpoint for Trump’s base, so tampons and theme colors have got to go. Flattery and obeisance are how powerful people keep themselves in favor with strongman regimes. Cash works, too.

Jujitsu to the rescue:

When discussing his love for jujitsu, Zuckerberg told Rogan that the sport let him “just express myself, right?”

“It’s like when you’re running a company, people typically don’t want to see you being this ruthless person who’s just, like, ‘I’m just going to crush the people I’m competing with,’” he said. But in martial arts, “you’re rewarded” for being ruthless.

What is the reward for boasting about your own toughness while charting your umpteenth cowardly zigzag in order to please the people in power? I guess we’re about to find out.

There's more at the link.

Claude 3.5 on the Origins of Psychotherapy

Another nod to my series of reflections on melancholy and creativity, which started with an article in 3 Quarks Daily: Melancholy and Growth: Toward a Mindcraft for an Emerging World. This time I’m chasing down the origins of psychotherapy. I knew it didn’t start with Freud, but that’s how I started the questioning. The led to mesmerism and then to Breuer, both of which I had known about at one time, but had forgotten.

Then I jumped ahead to the mid-20th century and asked about John Bowlby. He is the originator of attachment theory. I’d learned about his work during my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins when I did an independent study with Dr. Mary Ainsworth, who had worked with Bowlby and had done pioneering work on attachment herself.

* * * * *

Did psychotherapy start with Freud?

No, psychotherapy actually predates Sigmund Freud by several decades, though he certainly revolutionized the field. The foundations of modern psychotherapy can be traced back to the late 18th century.

Franz Anton Mesmer introduced early forms of psychological treatment in the 1770s through his theory of "animal magnetism," though his methods were controversial. In the 1840s, James Braid developed more scientific approaches to hypnotherapy, establishing it as a legitimate therapeutic technique.

The real breakthrough came with Josef Breuer in the 1880s. His "talking cure" treatment of Anna O. laid the groundwork for modern psychotherapy. This case significantly influenced the young Freud, who worked closely with Breuer before developing his own psychoanalytic methods in the 1890s.

What distinguished Freud's contribution was his systematic approach to understanding the unconscious mind and his development of specific therapeutic techniques. He introduced revolutionary concepts like free association, dream analysis, and the structural model of the psyche. While these ideas have been extensively critiqued and modified over time, they fundamentally shaped how we think about psychological treatment.

Therefore, while Freud didn't invent psychotherapy, he transformed it from a relatively narrow set of practices into a comprehensive approach to understanding and treating mental health conditions. His work became the foundation upon which many modern therapeutic approaches were built, even those that ultimately rejected his specific theories.

OK, so we start with hypnotism in the 18th century, then Breuer introduces the “talk cure” in the 1880s. Tell me more about Breuer. What was his training? What prompted him to the talking cure?

Josef Breuer (1842-1925) was a distinguished Viennese physician who came to psychotherapy through an unconventional path. His primary training was in internal medicine and physiology at the Vienna University Medical School, where he graduated in 1864. His early research focused on the physiology of breathing and the function of the inner ear, establishing him as a respected medical researcher.

The pivotal case that led to his development of the talking cure involved Bertha Pappenheim (known in case literature as Anna O.), whom he treated from 1880 to 1882. Pappenheim presented with severe symptoms including paralysis, personality changes, and language difficulties. What began as conventional medical treatment evolved when Breuer noticed that allowing her to talk freely about her symptoms and experiences seemed to provide relief.

This discovery was largely serendipitous. Breuer observed that when Pappenheim was in a hypnotic state, she would speak about events and emotions connected to the onset of her various symptoms. After these talking sessions, her symptoms would temporarily improve. This pattern led him to develop what Pappenheim herself termed "the talking cure."

The case took a significant toll on Breuer professionally and personally. He became deeply involved in Pappenheim's treatment, dedicating extensive time to her care. Eventually, he terminated the treatment rather abruptly when the therapeutic relationship became complicated by what we would now recognize as transference issues.

Breuer's collaboration with the younger Freud resulted in their 1895 publication "Studies on Hysteria," which laid the foundation for psychoanalysis. However, Breuer ultimately distanced himself from this work and returned to his conventional medical practice, leaving Freud to develop psychoanalysis further.

The significance of Breuer's contribution lies in his recognition that psychological symptoms could be alleviated through verbalization of experiences and emotions, a principle that remains fundamental to modern psychotherapy.

Were there others besides Freud?

Yes, several significant figures helped establish modern psychotherapy alongside and after Freud. Three key pioneers particularly stand out for their contributions in the early 20th century:

Carl Jung developed analytical psychology after breaking from Freud in 1913. His approach emphasized the collective unconscious, archetypes, and psychological development throughout life. As Freud's former protégé, Jung expanded psychological theory beyond sexual drives to include spiritual and mystical dimensions of human experience.

Alfred Adler, another early colleague of Freud, established individual psychology. He focused on how feelings of inferiority and the drive for superiority influence human behavior. His work emphasized social interest and community feeling as crucial for mental health, marking a significant departure from Freud's more individualistic approach.

Karen Horney challenged Freud's views on female psychology and developed her own theory of neurosis. She emphasized cultural and social factors in psychological development, particularly how childhood experiences shape personality. Her work in the 1920s and 1930s helped establish a more socially-oriented approach to psychotherapy.