davidberreby
@davidberreby
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Writer. Science, behavior, indifference, robots and algorithms. Author, 'Us and Them.' Dad & husband. He/him https://t.co/NZDPTYYfOJ
Brooklyn NY
Joined August 2008
Hello, 10-yr-old me in 1968. Just letting u know that in 2025 you will get protein from a powder mixed with water. And fiber from another powder. Just like you imagine, except this will be in Brooklyn, not on Mars.
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Should those of us who have always used em-dashes (and who are of course somewhere in the training data) feel responsible for this LLM tic?.
I never let AI write my drafts, but I do ask for feedback when I am done writing (which I am aggressive about ignoring). So I was amused by this suggestion from Claude. Yes, I agree, and I love em-dashes! But you are the reason why I am reluctant to use them in my own writing.
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Uh-oh. If humans try to train this out of LLMs, will they fake compliance?.
AI shows ingroup bias towards AI content!. If we deploy LLMs in decision-making roles (e.g., purchasing goods, selecting academic submissions) they will favor LLM agents over ordinary humans.
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Oversimplifying science in order to elicit the right behavior was not a good strategy. I think this is exactly right.
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AI sycophancy is a bit like smoking, liquor or gambling. Not good for people but they want it so companies are willing to sell it to them. Within limits.
A few people have asked me if a technical fix for AI model sycophancy is on the cards. In fact, a technical fix for sycophancy is trivial. In many cases all it would take is a tweak to the system prompt. The reason companies are struggling to get this right is not technical.
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Exactly.
So for those of you keeping track: .• Trump says he will end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Putin tells him to pound sand. War is now worse than ever. • Trump says he’ll solve the Gaza war. That war is now worse than ever. • Trump tells Bibi not to strike Iran to give him.
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RT @propublica: In April, President Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele shook hands in the Oval Office to celebrate a deal to ship gang m….
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Big shiny pamphlet arrives in the mail touting @MayaForCouncil for NYC D39 council seat. Why is return address in California? B/c pamphlet comes from Uber. Haven't decided on my vote, but, hmmm -- not a good look.
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RT @danshipper: 🚨 NEW: . We made Claude, Gemini, o3 battle each other for world domination. We taught them Diplomacy—the strategy game whe….
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At #ICRA2025, I had a chance to chat with @AmecaTheRobot (or, I guess more accurately, with one of its personas). Link in reply.
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I'm not telling you to cancel if @academia is worth it to you. I'm telling you this company takes advantage of auto-renew to double their already hefty fee while you aren't paying attention, so keep an eye out! I wish I had.
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Do you subscribe to @academia premium? Are you on auto-renew? If so, beware! I was just charged DOUBLE the 2024 price to renew -- what had been $250 in 2024 is $500 for 2025! I stupidly checked 'auto-renew' so I had no chance to head off this abuse. Cancel yr auto-renew!.
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Great 🧵about a great and important story. The problem isn't just the big glaring instances of corruption. It's the endemic nature of it.
NEW: We recently heard that the Trump administration was leaning on the government of Gambia to help Elon Musk. For weeks, we made phone calls, wrote letters and knocked on folks’ doors to try to confirm it. But we were stuck. So @js_kaplan and I got on a plane to Banjul. 1/.
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There are no atheists -- or at least 20% fewer atheists -- in foxholes.
Wow!. Check out this cool working paper. "War Causes Religiosity". The authors scraped web images of hundreds of thousands of gravestones of deceased Americans. They found that people who were randomly drafted into war are at least 20% more likely to have religious gravestones.
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RT @TheFigen_: These birds saw a person feed an injured bird, so they all started pretending to be injured as well.
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EvelynWaughbot. .
"o3, show me a photo of the most stereotypical X and LinkedIn feeds as seen on a mobile device. Really lean into it."
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This is a great short thread about how to think about the interaction of politics, culture, psychology and technology. We aren't ape-folk in "2001" and our latest tech is not the monolith. Things are a lot more inter-related!.
Just finished "Abundance" by @ezraklein and Derek Thompson. Fantastic book! I found myself thinking, "I couldn't agree more." Well done! If I may offer one critique. however. .
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Uh-oh.
Lots of famous findings about human behavior are built on the results of economic games - tasks where participants allocate resources or make choices with different payoffs. A new study finds that up to 70% of participants don't understand the instructions of these games.
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