Jon Barlow

I teach data science at a university. I think a lot about the theology and philosophy of AI.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

"Take no thought of the harvest, but only of proper sowing" - T.S. Eliot

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@adcock_brett Get lots of followers with one simple trick: revolutionize humanoid robotics.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

The "Human Authored" badge is performative, gauche, and a likely agar for growing hypocrisy. Arxiv has it right: if a human's name is on it, that human takes responsibility for the content.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

One reason taxing AI tokens is bad idea: it reifies “token” as though this is a standard unit like a kilogram. Just as a gallon of brent oil has a different value than other kinds of oil, a token is largely denominated opaquely by different AI companies. If you must tax, tax a percentage of fees paid for tokens, but don’t tax per 1M tokens since this isn’t fungible or commensurable between companies.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@nikitabier A Nerf football.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

Questions like, “what is a human?” and “what are humans for?” have traditionally been places where theological anthropology has made a contribution. I agree that the vatican can’t be omnicompetent, but it has a substantive and historically grounded response to questions raised by AI that transhumanists have only been answering for six or seven decades. Especially with teleology (purpose/trajectory), they have a credible voice to add to the discussion.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@adcock_brett How is "Aime" pronounced?

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@_JKNFT_ @dianemontagna Encyclicals are written by some of the most learned people in the world. The Pope shapes the result, but the Vatican has world class scientists throughout its academic orbit in various congregations and pontifical universities. Just check out "Antiqua et Nova" as a foretaste.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@rohanpaul_ai Not even a thank you to a human effigy.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@adcock_brett Someone needs to write a folk song like John Henry

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@andrewhwaller That’s my other idea- Anne Hathaway in a “my fair lady” role where Higgins is trying to eradicate vocal fry.

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

Free movie idea: Uncanny Valley Girl

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@millerman It’s the handmaiden to the queen of the sciences, but yes, you’re right about the trajectory.

[Brett Adcock @adcock_brett]

Figure launched yesterday aiming to hit 8 hours of autonomous work

We’ve now crossed 30 hours of continuous operations with no downtime 🔥🔥🔥

We also welcomed Rose to the team - helping push us past 38,000 packages processed

[Thomas G. Dietterich @tdietterich]

Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@ThomasEWoods Write a new book!!

[Nostalgia @NostalgiaFolder]

This was peak AC controls

The world has been downhill ever since

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@NostalgiaFolder Completely agree. What have we done to ourselves?

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@realchrismanion Just curious - what does "next to" really mean in terms of yards? How many decibels?

[Jon Barlow @barlowjon]

@walterkirn Just remembered that hantavirus was the cover story in the X-files feature movie.