Jonathan Birch

Professor, LSE. Philosophy of science, animal consciousness, animal ethics. Director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience.

[Jonathan Birch @birchlse]

🦀🐝🧠🤖 How should we make decisions when faced with systems of uncertain sentience? My new book The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI is available online for free at https://t.co/PXter8pb9f. Please download it! Just click on PDF to get a PDF of the whole book. Individual chapters are also available as PDFs - just click on whichever chapters you want. The book is completely free to everyone and I'm grateful for all shares and forwards.

[alz @alz_zyd_]

the rather funny thing about LLMs is that knowing how transformers work teaches you literally nothing about why LLMs do what they do, or how to use them better

[Perry E. Metzger @perrymetzger]

I’ve seen this trope posted by a lot of doctors in the last 24 hours. The claim from doctors is that Midjourney’s cheap full body scanner is bad, because people would get treated unnecessarily for harmless conditions, and that would increase death rates.

Now, I have a lot of skepticism about Midjourney’s announcement (a lot of skepticism) but I think that the doctors are failing to look in the mirror.

What they are saying is, in effect, that they cannot be trusted with having more information about patients. That, if you give doctors too much information about a patient’s condition, they may kill the patient by treating them unnecessarily.

This isn’t a problem with inexpensive full body scanners.

This is a problem with doctors and medical practices.

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

It’s a mystery that stumped Darwin and many researchers since: what exactly drives the snap shut of a Venus flytrap?

Now, researchers in Science have the answer: a rapid, one-second softening of the cell walls on the outer epidermis of the trap.

📄: https://t.co/mw3V6mzgcW
#SciencePerspective: https://t.co/Q7rWJljY6o

[The New Lede @thenewledenews]

A Pennsylvania hog farmer who once used gestation crates now supports state animal welfare laws.

Brent Hershey says more barn space improved animal welfare and increased production, challenging industry claims about California’s Prop 12.
https://t.co/XhjOIqdt39

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

As living fossils, lampreys, such as this Far Eastern brook, provide an irreplaceable model for reconstructing the ancestral vertebrate brain.

The first single-cell three-dimensional lamprey brain atlas reveals that the vertebrate common ancestor (~500 million years ago) already had a highly regionalized brain, and subsequent neuronal specialization likely drove vertebrate brain diversification.

Learn more this week in Science: https://t.co/a9LAa6GKBY

[Andrew deCoriolis @AndrewRdeC]

Under pressure from family farmers, faith leaders, and animal advocates, and literally millions of normal people who voted to keep pigs out of tiny cages—Kansas senator co-sponsor pull support for Save Our Bacon in the Farm Bill. Love to see it.

https://t.co/1vXVITr7lz

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

Prediction: the pork industry will come to regret pushing the Save Our Bacon Act.

Gestation crates have survived this long for one reason: most people don't know about them.

The Save Our Bacon Act fight is changing that. It's exposing millions of people — including some very influential ones — to what gestation crates actually are.

The pork industry can keep saying they're a "science-based" solution for "animal care." It will never win this debate. Anyone with common sense knows the crates are cruel.

Every additional day of public debate about the Save Our Bacon Act is a day closer to a world without gestation crates.

[Luke Tryl @LukeTryl]

Striking here there has been barely any shift between the left and right blocs in Makerfield since 2024.

[Anil Seth @anilkseth]

Do animals perceive time differently from humans? @ScienceMagazine covers our new @TrendsCognSci paper on 'timescapes of animal experience', led by @ishan276 🦇🐈🦋🕷️🐟🐒🐍🪰🦜⏰ https://t.co/eh3LjZ3So3

[once and future wife geist @wife_geist]

theyll never be able to afford a nest

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

Portugal v DR Congo is the World Cup’s only group-stage match where both countries’ Atlantic coast is bookended by the same neighbouring country.

Portugal’s coast runs from Spain in the north to Spain in the south. DR Congo’s tiny 37 km Atlantic coast sits between Angola.

Stay tuned for more cutting-edge, geography-based World Cup analysis.

[Anil Seth @anilkseth]

Timescapes of Animal Experience: new paper in @TrendsCognSci, led by Ishan Singhal @ishan276 w/ @birchlse & me. Open access link: https://t.co/whg0sW3boP .@SussexUni .@SussexCentre

[Jonathan Birch @birchlse]

@MatthiasMichel_ @dioscuri @eschwitz @rgblong @AdrienDoerig I think it depends on background beliefs. If you start off confident LLMs are not conscious, then you might take the finding that they have a GW to be evidence against GWT, not evidence of consciousness.

[Matthias Michel @MatthiasMichel_]

New paper draft: On Cheap Artificial Consciousness. When investigating AI consciousness, it's natural to look at what theories of consciousness tell us. Problem: you can build simple systems that meet their conditions. So, what should we say? A thread.

[Jonathan Birch @birchlse]

@MatthiasMichel_ @dioscuri @eschwitz @rgblong @AdrienDoerig This sounds right to me. But do you think finding a global workspace is even probability-raising in relation to consciousness? I previously thought yes (and the Butlin et al papers say yes) but I have been doubting this.

[Jonathan Birch @birchlse]

Read "Timescapes of non-human experience" here: https://t.co/AZAhmQfMtQ

[Jonathan Birch @birchlse]

How do other animals experience time? It's been a pleasure to work with @ishan276 and @anilkseth on a paper exploring how temporal illusions and other experimental strategies can shed light on this. It's out today!

[Josh Balk @joshbalk]

In my 25+ years advocating for better treatment of farm animals, I’ve never seen so many thought leaders and elected officials from both right and left unite to defeat an anti-animal bill. Some things are bigger than political tribalism, and basic decency toward animals is one of them. Here's a small sample of those speaking out against including SOB in the farm bill. 🧵

[Luke Miani @LukeMiani]

> save $15M a year by cutting a screwworm monitoring program

> screwworm outbreak almost immediately

> $1B to combat it

Government efficiency

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

Spain v Cape Verde is the World Cup’s only group-stage match where both countries’ highest points are volcanoes in Macaronesia.

Spain tops out at Mount Teide in Tenerife. Cape Verde tops out at Pico do Fogo on Fogo.

Stay tuned for more cutting-edge, geography-based World Cup analysis.