Mordechai Rorvig

Science journalist and writer at Foom Magazine, a new, free, grant-supported website for original reporting on AI research.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Pleased to announce today the launch of a new science journalism website called Foom. 1/16

https://t.co/rxF9JFHBha

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

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[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

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[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

As horrific as the Iran war has been so far, I am starting to get more concerned about its disruptions to global oil supplies.

Looks like we will start to see very significant consequences in areas like SE Asia in the next month or two. Things are not looking good.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Important news from @sanya_mansoor

https://t.co/sfZZGTdVcB

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

https://t.co/m27aIiRteB

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Glad to see Meta and Google confirmed as making deeply cynical design choices that openly exploit the psychology of their users. It is *past* time that software companies either return to humanistic values, or be held accountable.

https://t.co/AuTMzAqoY3

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

@cgeorgiaw I appreciate this point, but I think to frame the challenge of AI in science as one of automating taste is to still be small minded. Science is not about taste! That is a highly bourgeois concept. Science is supposed to be about *ethics*; doing what is right and good for society

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Writing creates a need for thinking; to be a good generator of language, the generator must have an architecture that enables thinking. This has got to be one of the greatest qualitative achievements of the transformer architecture and the LLM era.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

@katelelkins Interesting. One reductive/umbrella way that I've thought about this is just that it's another example of the way that AI needs a strong ethical compass, even if for fiction, it's only for relatively superficial decisions. Lots of evidence to show LLMs do not have this.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Thought provoking.

[Jonathan Gorard @getjonwithit]

I think one of the conclusions we should draw from the tremendous success of LLMs is how much of human knowledge and society exists at very low levels of Kolmogorov complexity.

We are entering an era where the minimal representation of a human cultural artifact... (1/12)

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Outstanding analysis by @SmithInAmerica. The behavior of the US government is more unhinged right now than at any other point in my lifetime. Hesgeth is a sad, pathetic bully and stooge who thinks it's cool to brag about killing children.

https://t.co/fH6AShUTtv

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

@jeffclune Sounds like a slop book promotion to me

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Yeah, let's go ahead and just turn schools into surveillance states by paying for a dystopian AI counselling app "where students yak about their life problems with a llama." Or ...

YOU COULD JUST PAY FOR MORE HUMAN THERAPISTS.

article by @dtmollenkamp

https://t.co/edKuiM7KUj

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Wtf. Nothing from Meta or MZ surprises me anymore, but it's still shocking to hear they are doing training off of private video recordings FROM YOUR FACE. How is this eligible for training!? Great article by @naipanoilepapa et al

https://t.co/dv1PGwYver

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

This Trump–Netanyahu war is unconstitutional and violates international law.

It endangers the lives of U.S. troops and people across the region.

We’ve lived through the lies of Vietnam and Iraq.

No more endless wars. Congress must pass a War Powers Resolution immediately.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

Friendly reminder: Use of the term "warfighters" is nothing more than cowardly double speak invented by marketing professionals to try to deflect from the fact that partaking in any way in the killing of humans is a grave moral dilemma.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

@boazbaraktcs Hey @Harvard, what does it mean that your CS professors are now openly working for the military? Is that what you want in an instituon that is supposed to support human values? What does the Harvard faculty think about the fact that its CS department is part of the US military?

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

I see a lot of people praising this refusal when the subtext is disgusting. All these leading scientists, rushing to the head of the line to build war machines. This is a disgusting betrayal of the values of peace. We are not in WWII. These scientists had a choice.

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

This is a shocking statement from Anthropic. Although they'd already done a lot to compromise their ostensible positions on safety, this statement makes it abundantly clear they're a wannabe *weapons company.* I am so disappointed.

https://t.co/g7zASdrlbf

[Mordechai Rorvig @mordecwhy]

"Accelerationism" on Wikipedia: A remarkable summary of both right- and left-wing efforts to imagine political systems that go beyond capitalism. Often engaging deeply with the trajectories of modern technology and where they might lead us. https://t.co/mmLjg0tJyk