I’m Tim, originally from Texas but #AnnArbor #Michigan is home now. In my earlier life I served in the US #Navy. I’m a proud #UMich alumni, BS #Astrophysics and #PhD #Physics. Most recently I’m an #ArtificialIntelligence engineer working to make the better work by making driverless public transit at May Mobility.
Outside of work my interests include #3DPrinting #ttrpg #Cooking #running #MiniaturePainting and going to #StarTrek conventions.
My kids hate my jokes.
We're #hiring!
Two(!) full #professorships open in our department at WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business) under two complementary focus topics:
1) #Foundations of contemporary #InformationSystems, where we look for candidates who complement and strengthen the existing research at our department in areas such as:
· #ArtificialIntelligence: #AI Systems and Architectures
· #DataMining and #MachineLearning
· #DistributedSystems and #Decentralization
· #DistributedLedgers
· #Cloud and #Virtualisation
· #IoT and #EdgeComputing
· #DataGovernance for AI
2) #OperationsManagement with a focus on #DigitalTransformation, where the candidate’s expertise falls within one of the following research areas:
· #behavioural #operations
· AI application to #process improvements
· integrated #supplymanagement and #demandmanagement
· #ProductionPlanning and control
· #SupplyChain planning and control
· circular supply chains and sustainable supply chain management
· #tokenization in supply chains and new product development
Details at the link below... Please get in touch, if you want to know more!
Sophia Falk reveals how AI pressures six of nine critical Earth systems, including freshwater overuse in chip production, habitat destruction from mining, and toxic pollution from hazardous chemicals. Learn why AI’s footprint is more than energy consumption: https://youtu.be/1oPS_HRTUXg
#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Sustainability #Environment #ClimateChange #SustainableAI #GreenTech #TechForGood #Innovation #ResponsibleAI #DigitalTransformation #EthicalAI #RenewableEnergy
Call for abstracts!
Prof. Aimee van Wynsberghe, Director of the Institute for Science and Ethics and the Bonn Sustainable AI Lab, is excited to announce the third Sustainable AI Conference, happening from September 16 to 18, 2025, in Bonn. Find more information here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkKGtaKpSeI
#SustainableAI #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ClimateCrisis #Pollution #Academia #Research #Sustainability #Technology #ResponsibleAI
I was given the amazing opportunity to work with folks at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to make a CBC Ideas episode on the #turingtest #artificialintelligence and the #paranormal
You can listen to it here:
My colleagues at TU Delft are seeking to hire a postdoc to work on Applied Planning and Scheduling under Uncertainty, with applications in modelling supply chain scenarios for offshore wind farm installation: https://careers.tudelft.nl/job/Delft-Postdoc-in-Applied-Planning-and-Scheduling-under-Uncertainty-2628-CD/814890902/
#AcademicMastodon #PostdocLife #Hiring #Research #Planning #Scheduling #ReasoningUnderUncertainty #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #JobSearch #Vacancy #AcademicChatter #Career #CombinatorialOptimisation #Sustainability #EnergyTransition #Wind #WindEnergy #ReinforcementLearning #ML #MachineLearning #WindTurbines #ComputerScience #Optimisation #Optimization #CombinatorialOptimization #PostDoc #AcademicCareer #Academia #AcademicJob #AcademicJobs #TUDelft
I have what I think is a good example of how useless ‘AI’ is for understanding. I am tagging widely. I searched “how to identify mushrooms” on DuckDuckGo, which then so helpfully spammed my screen with this lovely advice (see image with alt text). The source of much of my knowledge is mushroomexpert.com, managed by Michael Kuo.
“A mushroom is identified by its characteristics”. I could get semantic here too about the definition of a mushroom, but talk about a pretty useless statement. Fine though. That’s well enough and good if you want an explanation that is super entry level. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though I don’t remember telling the ‘AI’ that I wanted only entry level information.
Then it talks about the danger in attempting to ID mushrooms because of the potential for poisoning. It tacitly assumes that my wanting to ID a mushroom means I want to eat it. I don’t. I just like mushrooms. I have a problem with the whole ‘some are poisonous’ throw-in, like its something their lawyers required them to include. How many are poisonous? 90%? 5%? We have no idea, and that’s OK. I didn’t tell the ‘AI’ that I wanted information on whether or not they were poisonous. But, as I’ll get to, the fact that this is included is not my problem. My problem is what they don’t include.
I think mushrooms are awesome. I think the fact that some of them are poisonous is relevant only based on the human-centric assumptions ‘AI’ is so obsessed with and what it’s dataset is built on. I don’t see the value in a mushroom based on whether or not I can eat it, and it chaffs me that they don’t also include any information about their ecological roles. You know what is a great way to identify a mushroom (including if I want to eat it)?!?!?! Their ecology (essentially, their ‘behavior’)!!! Let’s be sure to not mention that, #TechBros.
Ok let’s keep going, cause we’ve made it this far. It suggests talking to a #mycologist. It turns out that I don’t have any experienced mycologists on call. Mycologists are helpful but busy people. And I’m more likely than most of the population to know mycologists. You might as well say, ‘don’t bother trying to ID the mushroom’. Way to kill my interest immediately in something I’m trying to get into. If you really want to learn to ID mushrooms for foraging, there are sources you can look up to help you.
I’ll get to my main point. Identification of certain mushroom forming fungi to species is essentially impossible. Look up Amanitas or Russulas on mushroomexpert.com (phenomenal source, old school blogging). There is no clear delineating of what a mushroom forming species even is. Scientists argue over and reclassify bird subspecies all the time. Imagine the black box that is mushroom forming fungi, which most of the time is a web of single-cell wide threads hidden in the soil. Some mushrooms historically were ‘IDed’ (scientifically) by taste or color, which as you all know everyone experiences these things the same, all the time. And, darnit, I happened to leave my DNA sequencing kit at home (as if there aren’t issues with classifying mushroom forming fungi on their DNA alone).
If ‘AI’ were functional, to me, it would include the suggestion that one option is, instead of focusing on species, focus on species groupings (this also applies to foraging for mushrooms if done thoughtfully). Species groupings can be more useful, as is sometimes saying: “I don’t need to know exactly what this is. I’ll just focus on it’s ecology instead of obsessing over an arbitrary definition”. This nuance is not something that can be corrected with better algorithms or more training data (in fact, its going to get worse), because #LLM s are designed to spit out the lowest common denominator.
In the end, given all the questions I brought up, the biggest problems I have with ‘AI’ is that it falsely assumes something gigantic about the question I am asking and gives a simplified and highly misleading perception of how much we actually know. I think it makes a big mistake assuming that I am uncurious and want a bare-minimum answer. And when it comes to the grand total of all there is to know about mushroom forming fungi, we know next to nothing. Of course, 'AI' cannot say that because 'AI' doesn't know what it doesn't know.
You know who can identify and communicate all of these nuances? Humans.
#nature #mushrooms #fungi #AI #technology #artificialIntelligence #ecology #solarPunk #EcologicalReciprocity
Bad idea: #ArtificialIntelligence automatically improves #productivity. https://jchyip.medium.com/bad-idea-artificial-intelligence-automatically-improves-productivity-0829fcf2146c
#Google on Tues updated its #ethical guidelines around #ArtificialIntelligence, removing commitments not to apply the #technology to #weapons or #surveillance.
The company’s #AI principles previously included a section listing 4 “Applications we will not pursue.” As recently as Jan 30 that included weapons, surveillance, technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall #harm,” & use cases contravening principles of #InternationalLaw & #HumanRights….
#law
https://blog.google/technology/ai/responsible-ai-2024-report-ongoing-work/
Perpetual reminder that the entire business model of LLM-based chatbots, no matter their nationality, is based on intellectual property theft and this gem from XKCD:
The thing to keep in mind about Large Language Models (LLMs, what people refer to as AI, currently) is even though human knowledge in the form of language is fed into them for their training, they are only storing statistical models of language, not the actual human knowledge. Their responses are constructed from statistical analysis of context of prior language used.
Any appearance of knowledge is pure coincidence. Even on the most “advanced” models.
Language is how we convey knowledge, not the knowledge itself. This is why a language model can never actually know anything.
And this is why they’re so easy to manipulate into conveying objectively false information, in some cases, maliciously so. ChatGPT and all the other big vendors do manipulate their models, and yes, in part, with malice.
#LargeLanguageModels #LLM #AI #NotAI #ChatGPT #ChatGPTIsNotAI #MaliciousAI #NotIntelligent #ArtificialIntelligence
We really got the computer-human relationship all wrong: it should be a model of consent, rather than about restraining bolts, governor modules, or the Three Laws of Robotics
I was thinking about this excellent speech by Martha Wells on her Murderbot diaries being stories of bodily autonomy and slavery, and about the fantastic video on The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars by Pop Culture Detective.
https://marthawells.dreamwidth.org/649804.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD2UrB7zepo
Martha Wells spells out how wrong the Three Laws of Robotics are in stipulating a subservient relationships for robots to sacrifice themselves on behalf of humans, built around fears or assumptions that robots would inherently act to harm humans (or not act to save humans) and that therefore robots should put humans before themselves.
#ThreeLawsOfRobotics
#MurderbotDiaries
#ArtificialIntelligence #Al
#Authors and non-editors, this post is for you. Want to know why most #editors don't think #ArtificialIntelligence (#AI) should be invited into #BookPublishing? Please read the blog post at https://defector.com/theres-no-shortcut-to-publishing-a-book. We must all pay attention to this issue so that publishing doesn't go away.
Re-#introduction (I switched mastodon servers):
Working in teacher's #education in #Heidelberg, Germany. Interested in #theology, #diaconia, #philosophy, #carework, #digitalisation, #digitalhumanities, #datascience, #ai #artificialintelligence.
Co-editor of the #openaccess journal @CursorZeth
Posts may contain random stuff.
Zwar nicht #neuhier, aber dennoch:
Ich arbeite im Bereich #Lehrendenbildung, #Bildung in #Heidelberg. Interessiere mich für #Theologie, #Diakonie, #Philosophie, #Digitalisierung, #KI #künstlicheintelligenz.
Mitherausgeber von @CursorZeth
Ich poste über alles Mögliche.
📷 #Germany has unleashed self-learning¹ AI camera systems on it's citizens.
AI + Mass Surveillance = Human Rights violations Made in Germany:
🇬🇧 https://madeindex.org/blog/ai-mass-surveillance-human-rights-violations-made-in-germany
🇩🇪 https://madeindex.org/de/ki-massenueberwachung-menschenrechtsverletzungen-made-in-germany
Sources:
¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXQ_E6AZTXQ&t=158
#Tech #Privacy #Government #Artificialintelligence #Software #IT #News #Mannheim #Deutschland #KI #MadeinGermany #HumanRights #Surveillance #kunstlicheintelligenz #uberwachung #AI #camera #regierung #nachrichten #georgeorwell #german #deutsch #BadenWurttemberg #parody
Excited to be speaking at OggCamp2024 about Internet search in an LLM era, aka ✨ The AI Will Continue Until Morale Improves ✨
Get your tickets: https://oggcamp.org/
#OggCamp #OggCamp2024 #LLM #LargeLanguageModels #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #SearchClub #PlatformDecay #Enshitification #Enshittification
Fighting bots is fighting humans.
One advantage to working on freely-licensed projects for over a decade is that I was forced to grapple with this decision far before mass scraping for AI training.
"Establishing that AI training requires a copyright license will not stop AI from being used to erode the wages and working conditions of creative workers. ... Our path to better working conditions lies through organizing and striking, not through helping our bosses sue other giant multinational corporations for the right to bleed us out." –
@pluralistic
One flaw of the LLMs I've used: they will never give you harsh criticism. While it would be nice to think all my writing is just that good, I know there are no circumstances where someone will ask for feedback and it will say “throw the whole thing out and start again.”
Altogether, the exercise reinforced my previous opinion: LLMs are terrible writers, but decent editorial rubber ducks.
https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/rubber-duck-editing-with-llms
In Karel Čapek‘s 1920 play «R.U.R.», when talking about those who created robots (in this case artificial humans) for their personal profit, the character Alquist says: «They dreamed of the dividends. And on those dividends humanity will perish.»
More than a hundred years later, this fictional warning sounds oddly contemporary.
(Quote taken from the translation by Claudia Nowack, published by Penguin Books in 2004)
—
#ArtificialIntelligence #technology #IrresponsibleTech #ScienceFiction
Remember when tech CEOs whipped us into a frenzy about generative AI changing everything? Those days are long gone.
Google and OpenAI’s latest demos show the bubble is deflating, but they’re still going to seize as much power as they can before the crash.
https://disconnect.blog/ai-hype-is-over-ai-exhaustion-is-setting-in/