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Elay Shech

@elayshech.bsky.social
255 followers 337 following 40 posts

Philosopher of Science & Physics, AI Ethics & Machine Learning. Professor at Auburn University | PhD, HPS, University of Pittsburgh elayshech.com

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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
cambridge.org
The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Center for PhilSci @center4philsci.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The Center is proud to congratulate Interim Director John Norton for winning the 2026 Lakatos Award for his books The Material Theory of Induction and The Large-Scale Structure of Inductive Inference. #philsci Read more about John and the award on our website: ow.ly/CPVQ50ZNvAH
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Reposted by Elay Shech
LSE Philosophy @lsephilosophy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
🏆 Congratulations to 2026 #Lakatos Award winner John Norton, who receives the award for his books The Material Theory of Induction and The Large-Scale Structure of Inductive Inference. Congratulations! More: www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/n... #PhilSci #LSEPhilosophy @center4philsci.bsky.social
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
www.newscientist.com/article/2533...
newscientist.com
Mathematics of thermodynamics is being rewritten after 200 years | New Scientist
The laws of physics that concern heat and work could gain a firmer mathematical footing thanks to “gauge theory”, which already helps us understand quantum fields
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
cambridge.org
The Methodology of Metaphysics
Cambridge Core - Epistemology and Metaphysics - The Methodology of Metaphysics
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Free to download: www.cambridge.org/core/element...
cambridge.org
AI and Consciousness
Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - AI and Consciousness
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
jcsm.auburn.edu/event/the-me...
jcsm.auburn.edu
The Metaphysics of Color - Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art
with Elay Shech, PhD, professor of Philosophy, and Michael Watkins, PhD, professor of Philosophy and department chair, College of Liberal Arts.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...
cambridge.org
Relevant Logics
Cambridge Core - Logic - Relevant Logics
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
a.co/d/08TR9msd Two chapters are on Brian’s webpage for free: www.brianzaharatos.com/book.
a.co
Amazon.com: Patterns and Static: Philosophy and the Question Concerning Statistics: 9798249637798: Zaharatos, Brian R: Books
Amazon.com: Patterns and Static: Philosophy and the Question Concerning Statistics: 9798249637798: Zaharatos, Brian R: Books
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
cambridge.org
The Philosophy of Time Reversal
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - The Philosophy of Time Reversal
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
transformer-circuits.pub/2026/workspa...
transformer-circuits.pub
Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
sites.google.com/view/humanit...
sites.google.com
Rethinking Humanities in the Age of AI
About the Symposium The emergence of generative AI is transforming activities that have long been regarded as distinctively human, including intellectual work, creativity, communication, and moral jud...
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Call for papers (via Deborah Mayo @learnfromerror.bsky.social): Synthese topical issue *Severity & Learning from Error* 30th anniversary of Mayo’s (1996, Chicago) Error & the Growth of Experimental Knowledge (Lakatos Prize 1998) & its account of severe testing Deadline subm Dec 15, 2026 #philsci
*Tracking shifts in error control*
- How does Al/ML shift from modeling data-generating mechanisms in
statistics to optimizing predictive performance in machine learning.
- How do changing guidelines for RCTs shift trials from probing biological mechanisms to predicting average treatment effects over a population?
- What are the social, epistemic, ethical, and political consequences of shifting regimens of error control?
*The value of probing error*
- How can adversarial collaborations and stress-testing advance science?
- How can error repertoires be built and effectively employed to facilitate severity in measurement and experiment?
- How does learning from error enter outside science (e.g., in art, architecture and life drawing)?Severity and philosophy of science*
- What does it mean for a method, or for science itself, to be
self-correcting or error-correcting?
Does it fit best with a pragmatist philosophy?
- How does severe probing take place in the historical sciences, e.g., climate science, geology? Can claims be well probed without being replicable?
- Rather than probing for falsity, how can we severely probe if a model is adequate for a purpose or problem of interest?
*Severity and contemporary epistemology*
- Can a useful cross-cutting epistemology that links science, statistics, and applied epistemology be built around the concept of severity?
- Do features of severity (e.g., auditing of assumptions) point to ways to avoid problems of sensitivity and safety in epistemology?
- Does requiring severity explain why legal epistemology resists mere base-rates and "naked statistics"?
Does it solve proof paradoxes in legal epistemology?Appropriate Topics for Submission include, among others:
*Severity and philosophy of statistics*
- Do recent controversies about the uses of error probabilities in statistics (and metastatistics)
present a challenge to severity-based reasoning?
- Do the new fields of post-selection inference (in Al and other disciplines) allow for error control despite data-driven constructions?
Or
do they shift attention to different errors?
- How does severity link to such notions as calibration, security, and stability, and statistical techniques that promote such notions as robustness analyses, and multiverse analyses?
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
vimeo.com/1195440730
vimeo.com
Does AI Need the Humanities? - Dr. Elay Shech | AU Eaglecast - 04-28-2026
This is "Does AI Need the Humanities? - Dr. Elay Shech | AU Eaglecast - 04-28-2026" by E Shech on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
cup.org/4dG9L2k
cup.org
Emerging Questions in AI Welfare
Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - Emerging Questions in AI Welfare
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
A roadmap for evaluating moral competence in large language models www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A roadmap for evaluating moral competence in large language models - Nature
This Perspective offers a roadmap for tackling the challenges of the facsimile problem, moral multidimensionality and moral pluralism in large language models.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Plato Warned Us About ChatGPT (And Told Us What to Do About It) www.templeton.org/news/plato-w...
templeton.org
Plato Warned Us About ChatGPT (And Told Us What to Do About It)
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Classical and Quantum Phase Space Mechanics, by Karim Pierre Yves Thébault, Free for two weeks! cup.org/3MhJMDA
cup.org
Classical and Quantum Phase Space Mechanics
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Classical and Quantum Phase Space Mechanics
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Does AI already have human-level intelligence? www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear
The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Richard Fisher @richardfisher.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Philosopher @elayshech.bsky.social explains the mind-bending reality of a third class of 2D particles called 'anyons' - using baseballs, holes, loops, and a coffee cup that's topologically equivalent to a doughnut aeon.co/essays/anyon...
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 26/01/2026
In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for a third class of particles called ‘anyons’ which rewrite the rules for how particles move, interact, and combine. However, they’re theoretically possible only in 2D, so what kind of reality do they actually possess? if any at all?
buff.ly
Anyons: the two-dimensional particles that reframe reality | Aeon Essays
Physicists believe a third class of particles – anyons – could exist, but only in 2D. What kind of existence is that?
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Free download until Jan 26! cup.org/4bCdU6K
cup.org
Health and Disease
Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - Health and Disease
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
My new piece in the @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Science Keeps Changing. So Why Should We Trust It?
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Free to download until Oct 3! doi.org/10.1017/9781...
doi.org
Philosophy of Cosmology and Astrophysics
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Philosophy of Cosmology and Astrophysics
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
This company claimed to ‘de-extinct’ dire wolves. Then the fighting started.
Colossal’s bold announcements have drawn criticism from many scientists, but the billion-dollar firm is not backing down.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for free during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. cup.org/4kEgivL
cup.org
Philosophy of Biology
Welcome to Cambridge Core
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
Researchers ranked AI models on scientific Q&A. OpenAI’s o3 came first. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
OpenAI’s o3 tops new AI league table for answering scientific questions
SciArena uses votes by researchers to evaluate large language models’ responses on technical topics.
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 30/06/2025
A new paper shows that the “creativity” of certain AI may actually be a direct, inevitable consequence of how they are built. Webb Wright reports: www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...
quantamagazine.org
Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity | Quanta Magazine
Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Cameron Buckner @cameronbuckner.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
arxiv.org/abs/2506.18852 It's kinda already happening though, MI groups are already peppered with philosophers...
arxiv.org
Mechanistic Interpretability Needs Philosophy
Mechanistic interpretability (MI) aims to explain how neural networks work by uncovering their underlying causal mechanisms. As the field grows in influence, it is increasingly important to examine no...
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 27/06/2025
Which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them? Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to find out. @mollyherring.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/when-did-nat...
quantamagazine.org
When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color? | Quanta Magazine
Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
doi.org/10.1038/s422...
doi.org
Human-like object concept representations emerge naturally in multimodal large language models - Nature Machine Intelligence
Multimodal large language models are shown to develop object concept representations similar to those of humans. These representations closely align with neural activity in brain regions involved in o...
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...
dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency | ACM Conferences
FAccT: Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
"Models... resorted to malicious insider behaviors when that was the only way to avoid replacement or achieve their goals—including blackmailing officials and leaking sensitive information to competitors. We call this phenomenon agentic misalignment." www.anthropic.com/research/age...
anthropic.com
Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats
New research on simulated blackmail, industrial espionage, and other misaligned behaviors in LLMs
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Jim Weatherall @jamesowenweatherall.com · 19/06/2025
@bostonreview.bsky.social just published a Forum on a recent (critical) post-mortem of US COVID policy, with responses from me and @cailinmeister.bsky.social, along with @adamjkucharski.bsky.social, Adam Gaffney, and @jonathanpjwhite.bsky.social. V. interesting! www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-di...
bostonreview.net
How Did We Fare on COVID-19? - Boston Review
To restore public trust and prepare for the next pandemic, we need a reckoning with the U.S. experience—what worked, and what didn’t.
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Reposted by Elay Shech
Nature @nature.com · 21/06/2025
Computer algorithms have designed highly efficient synthetic enzymes from scratch go.nature.com/43PmE5s
go.nature.com
‘Remarkable’ new enzymes built by algorithm with physics know-how
Nature - Computer approach creates synthetic enzymes 100 times more efficient than those designed by AI.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
OpenAI finds that tiny bits of bad data can trigger “misaligned personas” in LLMs—broad toxic behaviors from narrow inputs. But these features are detectable and reversible. A new path for AI debiasing? cdn.openai.com/pdf/a130517e...
cdn.openai.com
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
www.noemamag.com/ai-signals-t...
noemamag.com
AI Signals The Death Of The Author | NOEMA
The meaning of a piece of writing does not depend on the identity of the author, even if the author is not human.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Will AI take our jobs — or will companies reinvest in helping us do them better? Mechanize, a new AI startup, isn’t subtle: it wants to “fully automate work… as fast as possible.” www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/t...
nytimes.com
This A.I. Company Wants to Take Your Job
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Can large language models support mental health—or do they risk causing harm? A Stanford study found that when prompted to act as therapists, LLMs often gave advice that was misleading, inaccurate, or inappropriate. www.sfgate.com/tech/article...
sfgate.com
One of ChatGPT's popular uses just got skewered by Stanford researchers
When the stakes are high, a robot therapist falls way short, researchers found.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...
washingtonpost.com
Guest column | Is green really ‘green’? The mind-bending science of color.
Science and philosophy explain why a color is objectively real, even when people see the same shade differently.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
theconversation.com/if-it-looks-...
theconversation.com
If it looks like a dire wolf, is it a dire wolf? How to define a species is a scientific and philosophical question
Figuring out whether de-extinction is possible is as much a technical puzzle as a philosophical one. Add two kinds of DNA to the mix, and it gets even more complex.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
dailynous.com/2025/06/02/p...
dailynous.com
Philosophers On The Science & Ethics of Resurrecting Extinct Species - Daily Nous
"The Return of the Dire Wolf" announced Time magazine---not quite correctly, it turns out---in its article on the creation of three creatures genetically engineered into existence by the firm Colossal...
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Are colors in the world—or just in your head? If your red isn’t my red, does that mean color is subjective? Most people think so. But we argue colors are real and objective—out there in the world, not just in your mind: theconversation.com/colors-are-o...
theconversation.com
Colors are objective, according to two philosophers − even though the blue you see doesn’t match what I see
An object’s color appears differently under different lighting and against different backgrounds − for different viewers. But that doesn’t mean colors are subjective.
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
doi.org/10.1017/9781...
doi.org
The Metaphysics of Color
Cambridge Core - Epistemology and Metaphysics - The Metaphysics of Color
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
iai.tv/articles/the...
iai.tv
The truths in physics are dependent on falsehoods | Elay Shech
Science is undeniably great as a predictive tool. But it’s also full of idealizations – false claims in the form of simplification, exaggeration, and outright distortion. That would seem to rule out s...
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
doi.org/10.1017/9781...
doi.org
Idealizations in Physics
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Idealizations in Physics
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
www.routledge.com/Scientific-U...
routledge.com
Scientific Understanding and Representation: Modeling in the Physical Sciences
This volume assembles cutting-edge scholarship on scientific understanding, scientific representation, and their delicate interplay. Featuring several articles in an engaging ‘critical conversation’ f...
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
youtu.be/8L6PKzXGhHw
youtu.be
Elay Shech - "Scientific Understanding, Modal Reasoning, and (Infinite) Idealization"
YouTube video by Foundations of Physics @Harvard
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Elay Shech @elayshech.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
youtu.be/XbyltUSteEw
youtu.be
Einstein's Astonishing Idea
YouTube video by Instant HPS
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