iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 26/08/2026

It is, according to the stochastic parrot Google has replaced search with:

David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 26/08/2026

Did you? He was explicitly told that this was partially because people didn't like what he did in exposing Arday's fraud. And I agree he was an asshole about it. But that's still prima facie evidence that it was, in fact, partly retaliation for what he did!

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 26/08/2026

Oh, I certainly agree he's an ass, and I've know that for a couple years. But that's not the question. The question is whether it's OK for Ghent to fire him base on things they knew when he was hired, as a pretext to engage in retaliation. And it seems like we're talking past one another.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 20/07/2026

Over on the bird site, Anthropic employees are using their slop machine that 'can't think' to solve longstanding mathematical open questions which have eluded humans for close to a century.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 17/05/2026

Alternatively, of course, there are the even larger changes possible. That is, if AI isn't a normal technology, and strong AGI or ASI is developed, we should be looking at a different class of changes - but that's hardly less concerning!

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 17/05/2026

As a forecaster, strongly disagree with @kulveit.bsky.social on this. 🧵 "Massive change" is pushing narratives over base rates and trends; in the past 20 years, inequality increased in developed countries. Predictions defying trends based on "this changes everything" are a common error.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 17/05/2026

GPT-5.5 seems to do more 'hacking per dollar' ...Mythos does more 'hacking per token'" - @peterwildeford.bsky.social Thinking about risks from bad actor's access to scaled models, the costs involved here are still absolutely tiny compared to other attack modes.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 14/05/2026

I did not realize that, and after checking, will update my views about the relative risks - but the breakdown still has non-medical issues a much larger segment than most would expect.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 11/05/2026

Just sitting here waiting for the @andymasley.bsky.social haters reactions to his newest post...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 30/04/2026

This was in response to @dwarkesh.bsky.social's recent podcast with @adammarblestone.bsky.social. Link to original @henryshevlin.bsky.social tweet with the nested QTs: x.com/dioscuri/sta...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 30/04/2026

Hot take from @henryshevlin.bsky.social from over on the bird site, about comparisons of LLMs and humans: "Not a fan of these clichéd “we used to think the mind was clockwork” analogies. Sometimes science just makes progress... Some mechanistic explanations were wrong; others are just true."

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 28/04/2026

Yeah, that works for ants, pigs, and cats, but not cows.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 28/04/2026

Yeah, I see some weird preferences here, once you push past the prompt.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 23/04/2026

"Draw me a highly detailed where’s Waldo image with people or items to find, but of an ISO SC42 standards conference. Make sure to make it funny with in-crowd jokes."

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 15/04/2026

Hoskin's original quote was "Every measure which becomes a target becomes a bad measure" And if you care, see my original tweet thread with the sourcing here: x.com/davidmanheim...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 15/04/2026

Claude refuses to help invent conspiracy theories. Then, after calling Claude a "glorified and electrified rock," the user complains that it's "being emotionally manipulative" and then claims that LLMs will be "used to fine tune human thought as it globalizes our will and ideals."

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 29/03/2026

I didn't say you should speak with them, I said that it worries me when people actively shun them - it accelerates filter bubbles, and leads to enforcing norms not about what to do or say, and not what to support, but about who they are allowed to talk to. It means you'd refuse to talk to this guy:

[Picture of black man next to hooded KKK member. Caption: "For 30 years, Daryl Davis has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. He says 200 Klansmen have given up their robes after talking with him. Courtesy of Daryl Davis"]
Daryl Davis is a blues musician, but he also has what some might call an interesting hobby. For the past 30 years, Davis, a black man, has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan.

He says once the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided. Since Davis started talking with these members, he says 200 Klansmen have given up their robes. When that happens, Davis collects the robes and keeps them in his home as a reminder of the dent he has made in racism by simply sitting down and having dinner with people.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 27/03/2026

I think that the promotion of shunning people for being wrong, instead of opposing them and their ideas, is worrying - though I understand why others disagree. But what's unacceptable is those who take this another step, and attack people for being unwilling to shun those with wrong or bad views.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 27/03/2026

I guess I'm mostly back on Bsky now, since twitter is now not only a cesspool, but also again unusable.

Tweets:
Clearly, I'll be less active here now - and not even really by my own choice.

The one thing that made the algorithmically-sorted, politically-biased, ad-heavy, hard to navigate garbage pile of a platform usable was pulled out from under *my already paid subscription* with no notice.

It sure was easy for @elonmusk to convince me not to renew my @X Pro account - all it took was cutting off a feature which I paid for a year of in the middle of that year, with no warning at all.

(Screenshot saying X Pro is limited only to Premium+ subscribers.)

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 23/03/2026

Turns out mainstream sociology is the opposite of science. I'm honestly shocked. It's not like art, which is a valid but different activity - it's actively attempting to undermine collective scientific understanding by banning essential practices among those who might otherwise do useful research.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 14/03/2026

That said, I think the original linked article is mistaken in claiming that there is no groundedness. As I wrote last year: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 11/03/2026

Agreed - but even with visibility, the question remains; are you documenting the oversight properly? (Because if not, you're not doing governance properly!) arxiv.org/abs/2507.03525

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 10/03/2026

Who knew that would happen? Oh, right...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 10/03/2026

Markets are a spending-weighted aggregation mechanism. Buyers create demand, and production is dictated by the resulting market prices. That is to say, in a capitalist systems, AI agents graduating to economic actors is gradual human disempowerment in different words.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 04/03/2026

OpenAI's plans after signing the contract which they say won't allow domestic surveillance... are definitely gonna eventually involve domestic surveillance.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 02/03/2026

It's like the Fifa Peace Prize doesn't mean anything at all.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 22/10/2025

I'm here at #AIES2025, and still worry quite a lot about this. The deep skepticism about AI systems ever being generally capable, or even human-level in specific domains, doesn't seem to have changed over the past few years.

Tweet from @davidmanheim Nov 26, 2023;
"I hate that #AIEthics is so closely tied to AGI skepticism.

Yes, obviously AGI doesn't exist now, and ethics is really important to current ML. But if (when) we get radically transformative AI, they largely discredited themselves. And we don't stop needing AI ethicists then!"

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 20/10/2025

Excited to be here today at #AAAI #AIES2025. Looking forward to meeting more people and discussing governance and societal impacts of AI.

Low-resolution photo of David Manheim in front of AIES2025 banner

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 07/09/2025

Link to original: x.com/goodalexande... Follow-up tweet:

w this framework you can understand:
* Thiel Antichrist obsession
* Kanye getting into Hitler and launching a coin
* Trump memeing himself into becoming President then running again to escape imprisonment
* Elon generating Ani goon slop on the TL
* A16z wilding out

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 07/09/2025

From the other site - not a complete explanation, but correct as far as it goes: "the current configuration of economics/ wealth distribution is pretty solidly optimized to drive the wealthiest people in society batshit insane, which - to some extent - explains a lot of things you see around you"

Text:
I think the main reason you find a lot of very unhappy tech people even at the highest levels
- when you're a typical employee everyone around you is making .5-2x what you are
- when you start breaking out wealth goes on log scale. ppl with 10-1000x your net worth become common
- this is native to network effects, scale associated with AI training, and other winner take all dynamics in tech
- all of VC is structured this way as well -- (1 unicorn returns entire fund rest of investments are zero) which psychologically reinforces all or nothing thinking
- this makes competitive people miserable
- this leads them to do hallucinogens or other psychoactive substances in order to accept their place in the universe
- the conclusions drawn from these psychoactive substances are typically at direct odds with how they got to where they are
- and after getting one shotted they're still ultimately in a hard wired competition with people worth 10-1000x more than them
- due to the structure of technology it becomes more or less impossible to break out of your 'bracket' without engaging in increasingly dark things
- you realize that time is running out -- and become aware of synthetic biology (peptides, genetic alteration of children)
- you end up getting involved in police state investments, gooning investments, or crypto -- and view it as non optional to take the gloves off bc everyone around you is doing the same thing
- you're on a permanent hedonic treadmill and you can't ever get off or go back to where you were before bc after doing all of the things you've done you can't possibly ever relate to normal humans
- you get involved with politics or Catholicism or other Lindy cults to try and get off the treadmill
- of course it won't work and you bring all the weird baggage directly into politics or religion and poison those wells too

the current configuration of economics/ wealth distribution is pretty solidly optimized to drive the wealthiest people in...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 03/09/2025

Looks like this didn't include articles 1-9.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 02/09/2025

We're clearly hitting a wall - because if AI progress is really exponential, why aren't the numbers going up faster? Checkmate, AI industry!

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 31/08/2025

Yet another place where @garymarcus.bsky.social is right that LLMs don't have a correct world model. (The filter exerts pressure on the water level. It doesn't understand that. But then, I'd bet most humans wouldn't realize this either.)

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 19/08/2025

Partly agree; multiple metrics can help, but the issues that make metrics fail aren't so simple, and the incoherence of chosen metrics is a deeper problem than just infighting, and multiple metrics doesn't necessarily help. See the full article here: www.cell.com/patterns/ful...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 14/08/2025

I'll fill that one out as soon as you do one for me... ;)

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 14/08/2025

If done well, regulation and liability for current medical AI could reduce mistakes and mitigate ethical concerns. But if your concern reliably leads to more people being dead because doctors aren't using new technology, you're doing ethics wrong!

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 14/08/2025

It no longer lets me add the column, so that's good for the future. I "fixed" it by doing "clear cache and logout" - which removed all columns, but didn't actually log me out. But after that, it stays at the same URL - which does not work when loaded manually, so you need to navigate away.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 13/08/2025

Next requests: - collapsable left bar - allow customizing column widths, to fit more than 2 on the screen Also, bug report - the column shown here is broken, and I can't remove/close it.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 12/08/2025

Sycophancy isn't really addressed by current OpenAI approaches. This is seen, for example, contrasting types of errors found - not phrasing, but actually substantively different analysis, discussing different issues - when asking the two substantively identical below questions.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 11/08/2025

Sounds like a co-founder of OpenAI is effectively publicly admitting they have no expectation that there will be meaningful human oversight and/or control of the systems they will deploy. (Contra their recent commitment under the EU AI act; "AI-powered tools" are not meaningful *human* oversight.)

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 19/07/2025

No, moving a specified ethnicity out of a region is actually definitionally ethnic cleansing. And I'm generally happy to defend Israel from ridiculous claims - but this isn't one of those. ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 18/07/2025

Very happy to announce that my org has helped get commitment from the Israeli Ministry of Health to finalize plans to mandate salt iodization in Israel. Following the meeting this past Wednesday, they have one month to present the final plan to the health committee. Wish us luck!

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 10/07/2025

People think of respiratory disease as a fact of life, especially for kids - and assume that it doesn't really matter. In fact, @meltemdaysal.bsky.social et al showed children's minor illnesses has significant impact for decades. Reducing "routine" disease is a big deal! cepr.org/voxeu/column...

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 09/07/2025

Second, we also propose a maturity model for supervision, so we can suggest how firms can improve, or show when safety-washing occurs. Level 1: vague safety claims + no docs = performative. Level 5: lifecycle-wide supervision, transparent mitigations, and adaptive review.

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David Manheim @davidmanheim.alter.org.il · 09/07/2025

So what can be done? First, we need to know what is being done - so we provide a schema for documenting supervision claims, linking risks to actual control or oversight strategies. If someone says "oversight" without explaining all of this, they are irresponsibly safety-washing.

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