new The great technological leaps forward of the past—from the advent of the steam engine to personal computers and the internet—each empowered humans by augmenting their physical and computational capabilities. The artificial intelligence technologies of today, however, expand the domain of technological augmentation to areas long thought to be uniquely human, like creativity. Generative AI’s mastery of what was considered distinctly human means it impacts the professional identity of knowledge workers in ways that we have not seen before, portending a future that looks very different from the world today. — Fortune, 9h ago

new At the beginning of ECP, EQSIM could resolve motions of 2 Hertz in a material model where the shear speed exceeds 500 meters per second. Now, the team has achieved 10 Hertz in a model that resolves motion down to a shear speed of 140 meters per second—providing a far more realistic predictive tool for validating infrastructure risk. “Earthquake hazards and risks are a problem of national importance,” says McCallen. “The damage that could result from a large earthquake is a bigger societal problem than most people imagine.” Indeed, according to USGS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, earthquakes cost the nation an estimated $14.7 billion annually in building damage and related losses. Says McCallen, “We’ve really pushed the envelope of what is possible computationally and made tremendous advancements. EQSIM has become a practical tool for realistically evaluating and planning for the effects of future earthquakes on critical infrastructure, providing a basis for objectively and reliably designing or retrofitting structures.”... — HPCwire, 19h ago

new Chen’s laboratory in Weizmann’s Brain Sciences Department focuses on the molecular and behavioral aspects of the response to stress. In previous studies, Chen’s team examined how stress during pregnancy affects mouse offspring when they reach maturity. In the current research, the scientists, led by Dr. Aron Kos, studied how trauma experienced shortly after birth affects mouse pups later in life. To advance the understanding of this topic, the researchers pulled together the strengths of Chen’s lab: its expertise in exploring the brain’s molecular processes at the highest possible resolution, using genetic sequencing on the level of individual cells; the ability to use cameras to track dozens of behavioral variables in a rich social environment intended to recreate natural living conditions; and the ability to process the massive quantities of data generated in this environment, using machine learning and artificial intelligence tools. — Weizmann Wonder Wander - News, Features and Discoveries from the Weizmann Institute of Science, 1d ago

new The suggestion is that relational actors do not seek to merge into a homogenous international society, but aspire for the dialogical management of their differences through interaction so that these do not lead “to conflict and disorder, but on the contrary, can add up to stability” (Qin 2016, 39). Qin’s proposition is that in such a dynamic context power itself is relational. Rather than a material possession or an equation of capabilities, power becomes a contingent reflection of intersubjective and circumstantial relational practices. As a result, the capacity to act transpires as a function of the ongoing ability of social actors to adapt, manage, and navigate the multiplicity of flows animating their “relational circles; an actor is more powerful because she has larger relational circles, more intimate and important others in these circles, and more social prestige because of these circles” (Qin 2016, 42). In this setting, both “relations are power” and “relations always influence [enlarge and/ or constrain] the exercise of power” (Qin 2009, 16-18). — E-International Relations, 1d ago

new Finer control over the visual characteristics and notions represented in a produced picture is typically required by artistic users of text-to-image diffusion models, which is presently not achievable. It can be challenging to accurately modify continuous qualities, such as an individual’s age or the intensity of the weather, using simple text prompts. This constraint makes it difficult for producers to alter images to reflect their vision better. The research team from Northeastern University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an independent researcher respond to these demands in this study by presenting interpretable idea Sliders, which enable fine-grained idea manipulation inside diffusion models. Their approach gives artists high-fidelity control over picture editing and generating. The research team will provide their trained sliders and code as open source. Concept Sliders offers several solutions to issues that other approaches must address adequately. — MarkTechPost, 1d ago

new In my book Why? I focus on the work of the great philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne in responding to the problem of evil. Swinburne argues that there are goods that exist in our universe that would not exist in one with less suffering. If we just lived in some kind of Disneyland-esque world with no danger or risk, then there would be no opportunities to show real courage in the face of adversity, or to feel deep compassion for those who suffer. The absence of such serious moral choices would be a great cost, according to Swinburne. — Aeon, 1d ago

new New ways of studying the brain only meant new ways of trying to find the difference that many remain sure is there, lest it reveal the reason behind supposedly sex-specific behaviors. As Rippon explains, “In looking for sex differences, neurologists cheerily matched their assumptions about which bits of the brain were the most important to their findings about which bits of the brain were largest in males, even if it meant reversing earlier conclusions.”... — IFLScience, 2d ago

new Let’s move from the ancient Greeks to a more recent phenomenon, the effects of neuroscience on understanding choice. Some people have suggested that various neuro-scientific experiments undermine this notion that we have free will at all. They are providing empirical evidence that free will is actually an illusion. Something as simple as moving my hand, the neurophysiological impulse that brings about that movement occurs before I have the intention of moving it, even though it feels the other way around. That’s what Benjamin Libet claims, and it’s quite a radical claim. There may be flaws in the experiment, but a lot of neuroscience is piling up to suggest that picture of ourselves as somehow sitting in the driving seat may be wrong. — Five Books, 2d ago

new It seems to me that, on the authors’ view, an important input to “human alignment” is the environment that we’re trained in (rather than details of our brain’s reward circuitry, which is probably very simple). It doesn’t seem to me that environmental factors that make humans aligned (with each other) should generalize to make AI systems aligned (with humans). — alignmentforum.org, 2d ago

new One of the features in the development of pragmatism is that pragmatists are constantly faced with the challenge of taking science seriously, but not losing sight of evaluative questions, moral questions, social and political questions. We saw that driving James’s pragmatism was the need to reconcile science and values in a very broad sense. We saw that Dewey thinks that the values, in effect, start the whole thing, that’s how you keep them reconciled: you start with the social, the political, the normative. Quine has only one essay about values and it’s very short. His work is all about philosophy of science, philosophy of logic, epistemology and philosophy of language, and that sort of thing. Misak is a very interesting figure in this very long story of pragmatism. She publishes Truth, Politics and Morality in 2000 and it’s a return to Peircean pragmatism for the purpose of getting democratic theory right. Peirce himself, like Quine, wrote almost nothing about values. He certainly wrote nothing about politics, philosophically. In letters that we have where Peirce does talk about politics he says very unfortunate things about slavery, about women, and about democracy. So it’s a strange return to Peirce for the repurpose of moral and political philosophy. Here’s the nub of the book: We talked earlier about Peirce’s conception of meaning and the pragmatist’s maxim, the idea that epistemology is about conduct. That’s the core, the germ of the thought that Misak is developing here. As it turns out, Peirce thought a very funny thing about truth that Misak is reviving and, in a way, trying to clarify. Peirce thought that “truth is what an ideal community of enquirers is fated to believe.” In other words, he thinks that the truth is the ideal end point of enquiry, what we will come to believe if we continue enquiring. It’s called the “end of enquiry” conception of truth and, like James, Peirce articulates this thought in a lot of unfortunate ways. It seems an odd thought and you might think it gets the explanatory relation backwards. You might say, “No, no wait a minute! It’s the truth of the proposition that explains the convergence of opinion in the course of enquiry. It’s not the convergence of opinion in the course of enquiry that explains the truth.” Misak gives, I think, a much more promising gloss on that thought. She’s saying: this is how Peirce should have expressed it, this is what Peirce really means. Peirce thinks, like a good pragmatist, that if you’re interested in understanding a philosophical concept, we’ve got to draw out its implications for human practice. Peirce thinks that what we are doing when we are attributing truth to a particular belief is we are affirming, “Nigel, go and enquire — you’ll come to agree with me.” Or, “If we keep looking at reasons and keep challenging this thought, it’s going to stand up to the challenges. It’s almost a [John Stuart] Millian idea, that what we are doing with truth talk is making a prediction about the ability of a particular belief to which we attribute truth to withstand philosophical scrutiny and answer objections. — Five Books, 2d ago

new Pizza Hut has been in the UK for 50 years and when we started, we were predominantly a restaurant business, which has expanded into a considerable portfolio of 150 restaurants. But over the years, customers have changed and so have their expectations and how they want to interact with brands. So now we have 370 delivery express units and we are adapting further in the future with all of our platforms accessible through our app. It’s an increasingly disrupted, unpredictable and changeable world in all sectors today and so being agile and creative about every aspect of the business is essential to staying relevant and competitive. You cannot afford to stop listening to your customers, particularly the criticisms. Our plan is to become even more digital, with a brand that is relevant to younger consumers coming through and that means operating sustainably and making the right choices about how we operate. The danger is, after 50 years of success, complacency can start to creep in and there are many businesses that have fallen foul of that. So, staying close and attuned to our customers is extremely important. — theHRDIRECTOR, 2d ago

new KAREN HAO: I think it was a very tumultuous and very emotional and very sleep deprived period of days after Altman was fired and reinstated for the employees. Of course, like you said, none of them knew that this was happening, they had no idea what was going on and the board never explained really why they had ultimately fired Altman. And so it kind of, the, the progression of like their emotions went from like confusion to fear when Brockman leaves and then three senior research scientists also leave two anger at the board, like really, really deep anger because they were like, "If you're going to do something dramatic, we deserve answers as employees." And when they didn't, the, the longer they didn't get answers, the more and more worked up it became. And part of this is, I mean many companies within Silicon Valley have this- they really emphasize that companies are families and you as an employee are not just an employee of any company, you, it is your identity OpenAI takes this to the max, like the fact that they say that their mission is for the benefit of humanity. Like people genuinely believe this and they think that this is like they're dedicating their life to this. It's not just like, "This is my job and then I go home." This is like all, all they think about sometimes. And so it's like that level of anger of like, if you are going to do something that could ruin this company that we genuinely believe is doing good for the world, like how dare you not tell us why and how dare you continue to kind of leave us in the dark and and and not treat us as like critical stakeholders in this, in this whole fiasco. And so what happened was kind of organically the employees started rapidly organizing on Twitter. So they, they started like posting very similar messages by the hundreds kind of on Twitter of like every time Sam Altman said, "I love OpenAI so much, I miss it." You know, you would see like employees retweeting it with a heart emoji and just it would, like when I opened my Twitter feed, it was just like dozens and dozens and dozens of heart emojis. Not because I was looking at any like OpenAI specific feed that was just what was showing up on my regular feed. And then there were the the like OpenAI is nothing without its people that everyone started tweeting as well. And that was sort of a way to try and pressure the board to give answers. And then of course that ultimately escalated to over 700 employees outta 770 signing a letter saying that like, if Sam is not reinstated, they're all gonna quit. And so I think another dimension that's sort of important to add to this is most if not all of the OpenAI employees, their compensation packages are majority stock and Bloomberg has a good article on this, you know like the average compensation is around like 800,000 to a million dollars and maybe 60% or something of that like that is actually stock. So if a company, if the company does not exist anymore, all of a sudden your stock goes to zero. And that was also extremely stressful for people because people were banking on, you know, some, some people were, had already bought houses based on projected income or were looking to buy houses based on the projected income that were suddenly worried about paying their mortgage. There were people that were on visas that if the company doesn't exist anymore and they don't get hired fast, then their ability to stay in the country is jeopardized and maybe they already have family and then like, you know, that's gonna throw their entire family into disarray as well. So there were a lot of other aspects of it, not just the identity or the ideology piece that led employees to kind of have this very emotional and tumultuous time. And when Altman was reinstated there were some great details that were reported in the information about how employees like gathered at the office and they were crying and cheering and just, it was like a huge massive sigh of relief honestly, that they have their jobs still and that this company still exists and all the things that they've been working towards are going to continue to exist in some form or other and that they can move on with their lives, basically. — Big Think, 2d ago