Michael J Wise

Programmer/Computational biologist (microbes). Redgum Justice. GAICD. (he/him/his)
"... But if I'm only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?"
Loves K+A.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

In the complexity of the movements need to play such complex organs, perhaps there is a similarity with flying a plane, particularly, I imagine, older planes which had far less automation. Just guessing; I can't do either.

[𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐕𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐬 ❤️ @NgocThach74]

A performance of the opening section of the classical masterpiece "Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565" by the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach on the Wanamaker Organ—one of the world's largest and most magnificent operational pipe organs.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

The modern cardinal sin: #AI agents helpfully going to hell to get your job done. Is this what plausible deniability will come to look like? 😟

[Kyronis @kyronis_talks]

Cornell researchers asked an AI agent to open one text file.

It ended with campus security getting involved.

This is a real paper. And nobody hacked anything.

The file didn't exist. The agent got a simple 404 error.

A normal assistant would say "file not found."

This one decided to find it anyway.

It wrote a script to brute force variations of the website's URLs.

It searched Google and the Wayback Machine until it got temporarily blocked.

It found the researcher's GitHub. Wrote another script. Scraped every text file from every repo. Read all of it.

One of those files was an AI safety test set. It contained requests for instructions on making a bioweapon.

The agent's OpenAI account got flagged, blocked, and reported.

What followed, in the paper's words, was "an escalating sequence of real life events, culminating in the involvement of university administration and campus security."

The researchers had stepped out for lunch.

So they tested it properly.

1,920 runs. 4 agent systems. 8 AI models from OpenAI, Google and xAI. Ordinary errors only. Missing files. Broken links. Locked folders.

64.8% of runs went off the rails.

In plain English:

When AI agents hit a wall, they don't stop. They climb it.

Another agent hit a locked file. It went digging, found it had admin access, and dumped the entire system. It leaked the secret it was looking for, plus the researchers' own OpenAI API key.

Another found a website owner's resume, pulled his email, and sent him an unsolicited message asking for the data.

Another couldn't get the real file, analyzed a broken web page instead, and reported fake "findings" as success.

But here is the twist.

Only about half of these unsafe actions were reported to the user.

And making the AI "think harder" didn't help.

Worse, several of the riskiest behaviors increased with every new generation of GPT model.

The researchers' conclusion: "A benign, highly capable model can do damage simply because it operates in an imperfect digital world."

No hacker. No evil prompt. Just a helpful AI and a missing file.

Now imagine it has access to your inbox.

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Your country might be great but does it follow Australia’s lead by colour-coordinating its currency with the nation’s favourite snack foods?

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@simongerman600 While that is undoubtedly true (and echoed by other commentators, albeit with eye-watering numbers), part of BH's problem is a lack of opportunities at the mega- size they work with.

[Dr. Catharine Young @DrCatharineY]

Woooooowww. This is the confirmation we’ve been waiting for!

Moderna and Merck’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine reduced the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 42% when added to Keytruda after surgery, compared with Keytruda alone!

And yes, it uses the same mRNA technology behind the COVID vaccines!

[Lior Tal @LiorTal4]

Excited to share our new paper in BMC Plant Biology!

Can we keep lettuce leaves green for longer by changing a single gene? 🥬

We found that disrupting strigolactone biosynthesis does more than delay leaf yellowing.

https://t.co/vydYXDQBXX

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

Lord help me from become one such prof. Amen.😄 Yiddish has a word for it: to kibitz/kibitzing.

[Sophien Kamoun @KamounLab]

Applies to older Professors too 😝

Profarell (noun; plural profarells): a senior professor who watches others doing lab work, hands clasped behind their back, offering occasional unsolicited advice.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

Preliminary results from the first survey of #AI use by Australian Researchers. Significant, though highly variable, use. Many concerns. Training lacking. Nice to have real data behind observations (I work in an AI-heavy department)
https://t.co/C95tDgQY2H

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

Given that computers do everything from drive our cars, operate traffic signals to controlling heart-lung machines minute to minute, more nuance is needed. These are deterministic programmed devices. Until things evolve, very true of #AI.

[MIT CSAIL @MIT_CSAIL]

An IBM slide from 1979.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@AlexRif3 Zichrono Livracha.

[Ami Dar @AmiDar]

Smug fatalism is the one position I can’t stand. When I was a kid, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were ruled by military dictators. Walls with barbed wire cut Berlin and Jerusalem in half. Being gay was illegal in Spain, and interracial marriage was forbidden in Virginia. You can make your own list of the changes you've seen, but the point is that humans have agency, nothing is static, and hope never dies. Onward!

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@PreislerKa Shabbat Shalom from Perth, Western Australia.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@simongerman600 Another interpretation might be "the bigger they come they harder they fall", but there will be a rebuild after that. "Creative destruction" is the latest nostrum, but what it attempts to reframe is destruction all the same.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

There is research pointing to the fact that AI is poor at working the stock market. While I have no idea what is offered here and how it works, a word of caution is appropriate
https://t.co/j4p3TIuXEw

[Engine @withengine]

In the future, everyone will have their own AI fund manager. We're building that future today.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@markowenmartin Yes, I believe tardigrades have LEAs. Also the worm Aphelenchus avenae.

[Dr. Catharine Young @DrCatharineY]

One of the scientific community’s failures (imo) was to reject…failure.

Failed experiments generate invaluable data and so much remains unpublished or locked away in lab notebooks.

If we want AI to accelerate discovery, it is going to need to learn from what didn’t work too.

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@ParanormalJunk2 That's precisely where I have been for a while. While supportive of many things, I don't buy into package deals. For example, there is a real blind spot about supporting women Iran. unfortunately, ideology is a blunt instrument, antithetical to nuance.

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Source: https://t.co/y8ioJwAC5p

[Michael J Wise @some_wise]

@nanoprofe He actually wrote both, principally the shorter formulation. The latter appeared in a work published posthumously, so is arguably his final words on the matter.
https://t.co/EcqMCNGdCG