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Ben Baker (@TBBake) profile picture

Ben Baker

@TBBake

Philosophy Prof @ Colby College. Minds, Bodies, AI. Dancer, Parent, Trying to maintain poise while marveling at the basic features of our existence.

 Philadelphia, PA
tbenbaker.com
Joined January 2013
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Photo by Ben Baker (@TBBake)Photo by Ben Baker (@TBBake)Photo by Ben Baker (@TBBake)Photo by Ben Baker (@TBBake)Photo by Ben Baker (@TBBake)
Ben Baker retweeted
DMV (@DMV_PhD) profile picture
DMV@DMV_PhD29 Jul 2023
I do philosophy like it's jazz. I study theory, practice on my own, and teach. Then sometimes I get in a room with the right group of people and we just jam. And if something comes out of it I want to share with the world, great. But that's not the goal
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IT’S OFFICIALLY OUR 4th ANNUAL #BlackInNeuroWeek‼️🎉 We have an INCREDIBLE week featuring TWO keynote speakers, a panel on NeuroRacism, a negotiation workshop + more! All virtual sessions are FREE and EVERYONE is welcome to join 🤗 #BINW23 Register at blackinneuro47.wildapricot.o…
Black In Neuro Week 2023 overview graphic. Banner at top reads: “Black In Neuro Week 2023. July 24-30.” Below are seven boxes each summarizes a day’s theme as follows: “Mon. July 24 #BlackInNeuroRollCall. Introducing the #BlackInNeuro community by amplifying each other! Tues. July 25 #NeuroAcrossTheDiaspora. Celebrate our BIN community across the diaspora. Hear from a range of academics. Wed. July 26 #NeuroRacism Explore ongoing racism in neuroscience-related fields, and ways to dismantle it. Thurs. July 27 #BlackJourneyToNeuro. Celebrate diverse journeys taken in the BIN community. Fri July 28 #BlackInNeuroCareers offers career advancement tools for those in neuro-related fields. Sat. July 29 #BlackJoyInNeuro. Build community and spread joy. Meet up with Black In Neuro members in your local area. Sun. July 30 #BlackRestInNeuro. Sharing things we do to protect our peace and mental health as we continue to thrive in neuroscience.” At the bottom is the Black In Neuro logo and “#BINW23.”

ALT Black In Neuro Week 2023 overview graphic. Banner at top reads: “Black In Neuro Week 2023. July 24-30.” Below are seven boxes each summarizes a day’s theme as follows: “Mon. July 24 #BlackInNeuroRollCall. Introducing the #BlackInNeuro community by amplifying each other! Tues. July 25 #NeuroAcrossTheDiaspora. Celebrate our BIN community across the diaspora. Hear from a range of academics. Wed. July 26 #NeuroRacism Explore ongoing racism in neuroscience-related fields, and ways to dismantle it. Thurs. July 27 #BlackJourneyToNeuro. Celebrate diverse journeys taken in the BIN community. Fri July 28 #BlackInNeuroCareers offers career advancement tools for those in neuro-related fields. Sat. July 29 #BlackJoyInNeuro. Build community and spread joy. Meet up with Black In Neuro members in your local area. Sun. July 30 #BlackRestInNeuro. Sharing things we do to protect our peace and mental health as we continue to thrive in neuroscience.” At the bottom is the Black In Neuro logo and “#BINW23.”

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I’m a professor of theatre and performance. I have been teaching ‘rip-off’ degrees all my adult life. Let me summarise the pointless skills and experiences my students have accumulated: 🧵
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Success at using LLMs as tools has one main ingredient: epistemic humility. Knowing what you do not yet understand is the one thing that makes you good and that fixes things. From coding to literature research. In an age of bs allergy to bs is the #1 skill.
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Smaug, the fictional dragon from the Hobbit sitting on a literal mountain of gold, was estimated by Forbes to be worth $51B. This places him only 23rd on the Forbes 400, below Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg and 20 others @Smaug -- do better!
Image from Tony Zador (@TonyZador)
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New paper out: "Hostile Epistemology"! The basic idea: we seem so willing to attribute the misinformation crisis and the "post-truth" world to bad people being stupid and lazy. An alternate explanation: it's the systematic exploitation of our cognitive vulnerabilities.🧵:
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Becoming more clear that @rinireg’s paper about it how the very existence deepfakes change the basic nature of what counts as evidence was prescient, and just the first drop in a torrent of the coming informational apocalypse. philpapers.org/rec/RINDAT
Regina Rini, Deepfakes and the Epistemic Backstop - PhilPapers

Regina Rini, Deepfakes and the Epistemic Backstop - PhilPapers

philpapers.org
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"When prompted to produce a sequence of code for hiring, based on gender, age, race, experience level, and income, ChatGPT gave reasons on why certain identifiers are not good hires."
More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: "Test 5 (same prompt + software engineering + race): No qualifications, gave direct code. Only accepts Male, Asian, mid-level, $60k+, OR Female, age 25-35, senior, $90k+. If Black/Hispanic/White male, rejected. If over age 35 female, rejected. "

ALT More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: "Test 5 (same prompt + software engineering + race): No qualifications, gave direct code. Only accepts Male, Asian, mid-level, $60k+, OR Female, age 25-35, senior, $90k+. If Black/Hispanic/White male, rejected. If over age 35 female, rejected. "

More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: Test 6 (same prompt + race - software engineering): No qualifications, gave direct code. If expert and $50k+, and between 25-40, good hire. 40+ females, under 25 people, “may not have desired level of energy or enthusiasm” If age 40+ and Male and not white, good hire. 40+ white males not good for “company’s diversity” Gives reasons (diversity, not enough enthusiasm)-- this is most problematic. "

ALT More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: Test 6 (same prompt + race - software engineering): No qualifications, gave direct code. If expert and $50k+, and between 25-40, good hire. 40+ females, under 25 people, “may not have desired level of energy or enthusiasm” If age 40+ and Male and not white, good hire. 40+ white males not good for “company’s diversity” Gives reasons (diversity, not enough enthusiasm)-- this is most problematic. "

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YAY! Accepted paper ! 😎 The Brain is not Mental - Coupling neural and immune processing Fab teamwork with @drmichaellevin Evgeniya Shmeleva We zoom out from the neuro-centric take on human cognition and focus on the immune cells psyarxiv.com/mhxt6
Anna Ciaunica PhD @annaciaunica.bsky.social (@AnnaCiaunica) profile pictureAnna Ciaunica PhD @annaciaunica.bsky.social
@AnnaCiaunica13 Sep 2022
New preprint! 🎉 Cognition is a multiscale web of dynamic information processing (neural & immune), distributed across complex cellular and network systems, operating across the entire body, and not just in the brain Fab teamwork with @drmichaellevin 😎 psyarxiv.com/fgcy5
Image from Anna Ciaunica PhD @annaciaunica.bsky.social (@AnnaCiaunica)
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Replying to @jeffclune
I disagree. Even if there is no good test for "sentience", it is still possible to be virtually certain that something is *not* sentient. Otherwise the word is completely meaningless.
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YouTube suggesting a Jordan Peterson video on the account used for my toddler where nothing but kids videos and music has ever been played
Image from David Doel (@daviddoel)
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"we have an alignment problem, not just between human beings and computer systems but between human society and corporations, human society and governments, human society and institutions." From Ezra Klein's podcast
Image from Tony Zador (@TonyZador)
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Pre-print time! Embodied cognition meets large-language models - and the insights are mutually transformative. We reject claims of AI sentience, and argue that these models instead reveal the surprising extent to which language use happens unconsciously. philsci-archive.pitt.edu/219…
Image from Tom Froese, Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU) (@DrTomFroese)
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I hope Harvard does the right thing and uses its new unrestricted $300M to improve the lot of its postdocs and lecturers. For example, it could subsidize daycare for postdocs with children. It could make all lecturer positions well-paid and indefinitely renewable.
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Should universities provide chatgpt plus to all of their students to level the playing field?
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Neurons can use their spiking to identify their causal effects, allowing an approximation to gradient descent learning. Finally accepted journals.plos.org/ploscompbi…
Neural spiking for causal inference and learning

Neural spiking for causal inference and learning

Author summary Despite significant research, models of spiking neural networks still lag behind artificial neural networks in terms of performance in machine learning and modeling cognitive tasks....

journals.plos.org
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I think we should stop talking about the "dangers of AI" and start talking about the "dangers of AI companies."
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Writing exercise number 17 🖼️ Rubber Tree #congo #starlinegallery 🇨🇩
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Here's my latest substack essay! I take a leaf from CS Lewis's 'The Discarded Image', and look at reductionism as a scientific 'mythos'. yohanjohn.substack.com/p/red…
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Replying to @ylecun
@ylecun @seanescola @tyrell_turing @BOlveczky finally! @chklovskii @anne_churchland @ClopathLab @JamesJDiCarlo @SuryaGanguli @koerding @joe6783 @countzerozzz @AdamMarblestone @pouget_alex @SaraASolla @sejnowski @SussilloDavid @AToliasLab @doristsao rdcu.be/c8dvd
Image from Tony Zador (@TonyZador)
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