Is anyone else finding that multiple Google services are getting much worse recently? I heard they're putting pressure on their various teams to use LLMs for everything, maybe that's why?
Recent examples for me include maps insisting that a road I was driving on was closed and constantly rerouting me. Always used to be reliable. And playing really obscure covers of songs when I ask it to play music, instead of the original. Again, never used to happen.
Should we allow copying / plagiarism in introductions and methods sections of scientific papers? If the context of the work (intro) or description of some techniques used (methods) are the same as previous work, why write it out again in new words? #science #metascience
I wrote a thing for nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq3eykwnpkmsktzd9cnppgqqxyp93qg3encran6pm4r7r5zyuyt8gq0r848r. The attack on scientific infrastructure happening in the US shows that relying on any one country is not a good option for science. We need to start supporting and building international, decentralised infrastructure for science.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/science-must-step-away-from-nationally-managed-infrastructure/
#science
I'm giving an online talk starting in 15m (as part of UCL's NeuroAI series).
It's on neural architectures and our current line of research trying to figure out what they might be good for (including some philosophy: what might an answer to this question even look like?).
Sign up (free) at this link to get the zoom link:
#neuroscience #compneuro #computationalneuroscience #neuroai
UK friends. Reform is now polling consistently ahead of Labour. Membership is growing rapidly at the same time Labour membership is falling, and may overtake it within months. If we don't do something to get the Labour party to change course, in four years we'll be in the same place as the US.
If you have any pull in the Labour party please urge those higher up not to continue austerity policies and Reform-lite anti immigrant posturing. It's a disaster in the making. The rest of us need to make it clear we won't vote for a Labour party that continues like this.
#politics #ukpol #ukpolitics
Icy hills in the clouds around Hay-on-Wye. #photography
Trying a bit of #photography in the fog.
I'm thinking about a new way of interviewing candidates for a PhD. The idea would be to assume they're smart and competent, take their research proposal and do a 1h brainstorming session role-playing the first week of the PhD. Good idea? Could it introduce biases? Improvements?
nostr:npub193ru8sfw6cy6m8txd58tlu0cchclvttgn6gja289swjl6kaa2wksamdvlz nostr:npub12muqkh4zfchv5jx6pdd6jj0afqs3agq6jf57pn6p098nheqvaeas6wglrf Thanks! I think this course might have a bit more of a quantitative modelling and coding focus than you're looking for. I do think you're right to be sceptical about theories of the applicability of neuroscience to counselling because I don't think we know anywhere near enough about the brain to be able to make such recommendations with any degree of confidence. The course will feature a lot of me saying "we don't know how X works" and maybe that can help? It would be good if there was a course aimed at people in your situation, but I don't know of anything I'm afraid.
nostr:npub1q4fh206c42thhfaygdg4e47h2pejzt4d4mjk7k5k2pwmlw4vyz9spkej7m I found this article very frustrating because I also daily see this lack of solidarity and the terrible effects of it, but I don't think this article will persuade anyone to change their ways. It feels nihilistic. Better question to ask is why have we who believe in improving things via solidarity failed to convince everyone?
I'm currently developing a new course "Neuroscience for machine learners" that I hope to be able to make publicly available, and I'd love to hear what you think should be in it.
It's aimed at people with a machine learning background to learn a bit about neuroscience. My thinking is that neuroscience and ML have had fruitful links in the past, and may again in the future (although right now they're drifting apart). This course is designed to give students the background they'd need to be able to discover, understand and make use of new opportunities arising from neuroscience (if they do). I'm not trying to tell them only about the bits of neuroscience that we already think are applicable to ML, but to give them enough background to read and understand enough neuroscience to allow them to make new discoveries about what might be applicable to ML. The constraint is that it can't just be an intro to neuro course I think, because I'm not sure how compelling that would be to students with an ML focus. The course is 10 weeks and will have quite a practical focus, with most of the attention on weekly coding based exploratory group work rather than lectures. (Similar to nostr:npub1e6ku60wmh79lkesj22p2f4tu46ulqw69kayxmva7wvk4eeh3fptq6kct64 Academy.)
I have thoughts about what should be on this course, but I'd love to know what you all think would be most relevant.
#neuroscience #compneuro #machinelearning #ai
One of the posters I really liked at #CCN23 was presented by nostr:npub12muqkh4zfchv5jx6pdd6jj0afqs3agq6jf57pn6p098nheqvaeas6wglrf
Multimodal units fuse-then-accumulate evidence across channels
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.550311v1
Together with nostr:npub1zzea4qsgdtv4axgznhh0zrxhtaukl3zkf6t33sw0al9jq04zuveqjmvctr and nostr:npub19d9p04u4xfysdy92fycw947jrca3xve2gnsauysshzewxvmz8dms6kf02p -- check out their super nicely written preprint or the summary points below!
#neuroscience #AI #neuroAI #neuralnetwork #research nostr:npub19vpedfqa7c6egku0kg4sl5vtskz5q3m8zxfjxrurpvt8ecf2yqdsr2ynv6
