Scott McFarnell
@scottmcf
Assistant Headteacher. Interested in how neuroscience can support education. #EduSky
Pleased to be published in Artificial General Intelligence. AGI 2026. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 16855. Springer. Page 57 - Affective Control Under Uncertainty.
Pleased to be part of AGI-26 today. I’ve got an article in the book (between @macrinephd.bsky.social & @bengoertzel.bsky.social /Anna Mikeda). There is also a livestream at 00:35 UK time.
How do you do all this amazing stuff? I tried with Kimi and this is what I got.
This cartoon is a super-simplification, but what are the issues with it in terms of the free-will debate? @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @greggdcaruso.bsky.social
AI disproves the Jacobian conjecture after 87 years. Levent Alpöge (with Fable) showed an example of non-reversibility in a single post during the World Cup!
What about this for a movie idea? “In a world where everyone can vanish, one man refuses to disappear.” ‘Tiger, Tiger’: adaptation of ‘The Stars My Destination’ by Alfred Bester (itself a sci-fi adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’) with Austin Butler & Anya Taylor-Joy.
I quite like PJ Harvey’s new song ‘Voyager’. What do you think? youtu.be/XzCjzFsGl_c?...
I watched the feature-length Black Mirror episode “Beyond the Sea” where Aaron Paul & Josh Hartnett’s consciousnesses alternately inhabit a robot body. They only do this one at a time, but what if two consciousnesses inhabited one body? Is that feasible? Has it ever happened?
“A Fire Upon the Deep” by Vernor Vinge. How about a movie version with Domhnall Gleeson and Zendaya?
Why has no one ever done a drama on Henri Bergson? I give you “The Time War”
‘Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy. Life rebels against all uniformity and leveling; its aim is not sameness, but variety.’ Vaclav Havel
What about this… The World’s Greatest Problem P v NP “The proof is out there”
The idea that ChatGPT recently disproved the 80year old Erdos conjecture that grids were the best way of connecting points is amazing. It subdivided the grid and found more ways for the same-length stick to fit between points.
Philosopher biopic trend Ryan Gosling is Albert Camus Every Day Is The Last Judgement
“Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.” Merleau-Ponty We never meet raw facts first, then add meaning later. A door is already an exit, a face already a mood, a silence already a threat or invitation. To be conscious is to be caught in significance.
This is quite a fun use of AI. All computer generated (including the presenter), but very well done. The YouTube clip is about 12minutes. Not perfect, but a clever idea. Chloe VS History is an AI YouTuber who goes back in time to do a travel vlog from 1536 London.
I saw this online and wondered whether the future demand is for more specialists or more generalists or a mixture. What do you think and why?
Could artificial systems ever feel? Ever experience a self? This paper explores a testable hypothesis. zenodo.org/records/1949...
What does it mean for a machine to feel its own survival? Affective Control under Uncertainty (ACU) proposes a testable architecture for AI systems whose control is grounded in their own continued viability, not just assigned goals Survival is the constraint, not the objective.
Conclusions on LLMs from Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize Lecture delivered by 2025 winner Professor Michael John Wooldridge.
This formula says selfhood (self model recruitment intensity) increases with 3 things: uncertainty about what to do (H), big differences in how good or bad the options are (Variance) & time running out (T). As options clash and a deadline looms, the system boosts self commitment.
The friction between education & digital devices - encapsulated in Dave Eggers’ 2021 novel ‘The Every’.
Temporal continuity without persistent selfhood? Each time a self is recruited, it forms under stable constraints: same body, affective architecture, values, memories & social world. Similar constraints produce similar reconstructions. Continuity may be repetition, not permanence. Thoughts?