Peter V. Johnston

I turn messy technical work into tools people actually use.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

Donors close the gap mostly by lifting the HOMO, not the LUMO. Four-point BMN series, same acceptor: HOMO moves ~2.5× farther than the LUMO. Para-fluorine still counts as a weak net donor.

https://t.co/b49oo9GELH

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

Atomic number is not the bill: Kr→Rb raises Z by 1 while PBE wall time falls 26.8%.

https://t.co/9uprd1Oy3y

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@echonought @AndrewYNg

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@theryanoprea @AndrewYNg Why are so many not leaving?

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

Two frames, one muon: decay exponent 0.80209703 — ~44.8% survive 15 km vs ~0 without dilation.

https://t.co/pELiQIYaxZ

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@speakerjohnash

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

When they say: Please, for the love of God, regulate us. Give us licences, audits, and bans before our digital God destroys us all.

Here is what is actually being requested. Three things, in order.

A regulatory body that they control, to prevent competition from catching up. Written with their people, staffed by their alumni, and calibrated to what they can already afford. Compliance is a fixed cost, which means it is trivial for the incumbent and fatal for the challenger. Not technology, but paperwork becomes their moat.

Immunity from liability. This is the one nobody talks about and it is the most valuable of the three. Today, if your model causes harm, it is your fault. Once licensed, audited, and approved, it is the regulator’s fault – you followed the rules. The licence converts responsibility into a receipt.

Too big to fail status, which means taxpayer funded bailouts in case of problems. Declare it critical infrastructure and the state now has an interest in your survival. Which means, when something goes wrong, the losses are public and the gains stay private. We have watched this film. Banking, 2008, same argument, same vocabulary.

Note the pattern: every one of the three transfers something from them to the public – risk, competition, cost – while the language is entirely about protecting the public from them.

The sincerity of the fear is beside the point. Sincere people can still ask for exactly what an insincere person would ask for, and the request should be judged by what it does rather than by what motivates it.

The alternative is unglamorous and works: competition, adversarial testing between rivals who want to find each other’s flaws, and full liability after real harm. Nobody gets a licence. Nobody gets immunity. Nobody gets a bailout. You build, and you answer for what you built.

That is the arrangement that made the West rich. It has never needed anyone’s permission to work.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@Optimistbot @C_J_Lester @GaryMarcus Probably a scraping script.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@C_J_Lester @GaryMarcus How many steps from wiping out humanity is that exactly?

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@ZackKorman @GaryMarcus Makes sense, since the last one followed the same profile.

[Jordan Schachtel @JordanSchachtel]

Two of the reporters on the byline are funded by the Tarbell Center, an AI doomer org controlled by Kamala Harris megadonor Dustin Moskovitz. Tarbell gives journalists large grants to insert AI doomer stories into prominent outlets. @TIME did not disclose the affiliation.

[Aaron McIntire @DeaceProducer]

All the worst people are taking the exact same position on the same issue at the same time.

Huh.

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

@raphaelmilliere Sure, but when it turns out the leak was caused by the plumber who neglected to tighten a pipe fitting, or perhaps poked a hole in one of the pipes, you shouldn't question the entire plumbing industry. You should question the plumber's compétence and/or motivations.

[Cosmic Orphan @CosmicOrFun]

@tdietterich Relying on authority is one of the worst things you can do. In practice, authorities often don't even understand the fields they work in, and sometimes the entire field itself may be bogus. For decades, fake scientists and parasites have lived off grant money.

[Verdi @VerdiK]

sure, seems logical, but to what end?

what is the purpose of requiring such strong authorship mastery?

if the finding is true and has practical utility, it would seem a net loss to not append it to the archive of human knowledge.

the burden of verification needs a different solution than tightening gatekeeping mechanisms

[miguel @migduroli_]

no. im not saying that. that’s another fallacy you’re falling into. first the authority fallacy, second assigning to me ideas i didnt say to try and ridicule my pov. what i said is what i said. that nobody should be controlling what people upload to an archive of drafts (beyond the standard measures of copyrighting etc). if you want to become a journal, bc you’re essentially proposing a editorial board, then become a journal. that won’t stop people finding new ways of uploading their content to somewhere. new archives will appear. that’s what i’m saying, and also that you, nor me, nor anyone else should be regulating what people write and upload. and i can find dozens of ways those measures will backfire. an arXiv manuscript is not a reviewed article. so i don’t care if it’s coming from a high school student or not, as long as someone finds value in it. that’s the whole point of this. if arXiv starts behaving like a journal, there’ll be no reason to use it instead of any other journal. and people will find another platform to upload their drafts.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@tdietterich Work by authors using AI should be verifiable and reproducible.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@brianchau57 @lumpenspace So if I read that correctly, they used their agents to hack, then coordinated a fear campaign saying we need to increase government control so agents don’t hack. Why aren’t they facing legal issues for this already??

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@QuentinCody

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

The notion of the tools I’ve grown accustomed to working with at my job and in my personal research being regulated out of existence is giving me Flowers for Algernon vibes.

[Peter V. Johnston @pvjohnston]

@vineerpasam Yes. Frequently.