This is so frustrating to read from The New Yorker. Reward hacking *long* predates LLMs. The Coast Runners paper on reward hacking (in reinforcement learning, pre-LLMs) is 10 years old! Reward hacking is not new, and not a sign of a breakthrough intelligence, much less sentience. Did AI write this?

look at her little ears

Mirror on the River Tweed

Puffin in Jedburgh, reminding me why they’re all good dogs

Thrilled to find out today that The AI Mirror has earned out its advance, and is still going strong. Traveling to Japan next month just in time to hopefully see this on some Tokyo bookshelves. Wild cover…my first time seeing the design!

Congratulations to Dr. Bhargavi Ganesh, my truly brilliant PhD student in Informatics who I have been immensely lucky to work with @technomoralfutures.bsky.social - so proud to be able to share this moment with you! @bhargaviganesh.bsky.social

“can I get ah….let’s see…the Big Mouse meal and oh yeah supersize the fries”

Uh are they supposed to just come up to your window like a drive thru

if not friend why friend shaped

how I know she will wear out her welcome, exhibit 1a:

having one of those days where you think you are sailing the grimdark bullshit seas with great equanimity and fortitude and then you read one more asshat comment on the Internet and

Evergreen

Came home from the US yesterday, and tonight is the last night of my sabbatical. I managed to stay awake through jet lag just long enough to finally watch the finale of Widow’s Bay omg

I have been in California for a week in beautiful weather, eating great food, seeing family and friends and smelling redwoods and I can’t fully enjoy it because I miss my dog so much it hurts

The Reflecting Pool rn

At UC Berkeley this week and this campus is a Disney movie. There’s a squirrel calmly eating a cookie in the faculty club lounge and a baby deer hanging out by the door. I expect talking bears to greet me in the library tomorrow

Me after I’ve turned off the unwanted AI summaries

I'm rereading an old paper of mine from 2017 ('AI and the Automation of Wisdom') and I'm having one of these moments

the dog every morning

wat

Went for a hike and almost tripped on this spicy chonkster (don’t be alarmed Scottish friends, I’m in California, the rattlesneks have not swum the pond)

I am enjoying imagining what Carol is yelling to the cat sitter

Since the double bath she has been conked out to the world. Literal honk shoos

She is supposed to look like this

My husband just went to pick up Puffin from day care and texted me this