iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 18h

Gonna have to disagree on this one. Being *told* you have $500k in debt, having to fight for it to be acknowledged as an error, *is* the harm. The psychological damage that can do, on top of the stresses of being a new parent, can’t be overstated

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 18h

Putin has been in his ear for years

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 18h

Surely I’m not the only person that remembers this?

WSJ
ALEXANDRA CITRIN-SAFADI/WSJ
EXCLUSIVE
Elon Musk's Secret Conversations
With Vladimir Putin
Regular contacts between world's richest man and America's chief antagonist raise security concerns; topics include geopolitics, business and personal matters
By Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold and Sam Schechner Updated Oct. 25, 2024 at 11:53 am ET
Aa
Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 19h

Her term is more accurately described in hours than in days, like how infants are measured in months until they’re like, 2

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

Why does this guy have an insatiable thirst for killing children? Was “feeding USAID into the woodchipper” really not enough?

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Reposted by John Benoit

Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

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Reposted by John Benoit

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12/10/2026

wrote on saturday that trump was not going to let democrats avoid the question of impeachment and here we are with an offense that would have had a president impeached, removed and *at least* exiled if it had happened at any point prior to now.

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Reposted by John Benoit

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

no coming back from this without punishing the entire chain of command from the officers carrying out this shit to the people at the top giving the orders

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

It’s a good statement. Unfortunately, Trump need only quote Mike’s wife, from Election Day 2016 “you got what you wanted Mike… leave me alone”

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I wonder if like, maybe his old suits suddenly didn’t fit right for some reason

An infographic for a walking assistance “exoskeleton” device that adds bulk around the users waist and thighs

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

There are a whole lot of confident amateurs out there that tell me climate change isn’t real, and I ignore all of them in favor of the experts

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Well now who’s making unreasonable rules

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

The guy bought florsheins for his whole cabinet

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It seems to me that there’s more than enough AI psychosis to go around without letting people abuse something they convincingly simulates their victims.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

He enjoys verbally abusing things that can’t talk back, and he carries that feeling into the real world. Do we want him to feel empowered to talk that way to those he doesn’t respect? Should he have practice with no pushback, and get cloyingly sweet, obsequious replies in return?

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

You and I definitely disagree on the possibility of consciousness in LLMs. I’d like to put that aside for a second and address this practically, if we could. Imagine the average neckbeard that is cursing at and abusing his LLM girlfriend/servant.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

What if I can just situate myself among myself across my version of history, that sounds way more comfortable 🫠

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And one shouldn’t mix religious certainty of an ineffable, inimitable soul with a discussion of science, either

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ha, ok. Thanks for engaging, but this is getting silly.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Point being that processing speed is a critical consideration. You can’t play a game that renders at one frame per lifetime any more than you can hand-process a single cycle of a LLM. Maybe it would take a thousand humans working for a thousand years, but yes you could simulate a brain on paper.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Computers run incredible simulations all the time. If you’ve played a 3D video game, the computer is doing thousands, millions of calculations per second to render each frame to you. You could do that math on paper, and maybe you’d render a single frame before you died of old age.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It sounds like you believe in the concept of a soul, separate from the physical being, something that cannot be recreated. That’s cool, I just disagree. Humans, in my opinion, are incredibly complex biological hardware, and nothing more.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Your answer is totally one I can get behind. I wouldn’t assume that anything humans have created today is likely to be conscious, but I also don’t see how it can be ruled as an impossibility that will never be accomplished regardless of technical progress

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This has been my experience as well, and it’s frustrating because the most vocal in this crowd are folks I align with on 99% of everything else! I can’t imagine asserting with confidence that a machine can never be conscious when Im not even sure if dolphins or elephants should be granted personhood

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

We could also do a thought experiment. Say we could perfectly map a human brain, and recreate it in software. The electrical signals between neurons is perfectly simulated. So the brain functions as a brain, but is represented in 1s and 0s. Could that brain be conscious? Is the experiment unethical?

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That’s exactly what the people working in it are saying though! I don’t trust them to be impartial, but I also won’t rule out the possibility.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I disagree. There’s actually a lot of disagreement around what constitutes a living being. Is a (biological) virus alive? Is a completely inanimate tardigrade, completely desiccated but ready to be revived, alive? There’s a great discussion of this in the book Alien Earths by Lisa Kaltenegger

us.macmillan.com

Alien Earths

"Kaltenegger's breezy narrative style invites you to experience with her the challenges and joys of being a scientist on the frontier of discovery." —Neil ...

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Maybe, but without a solid, scientific definition of consciousness, it would be hard to prove one way or another.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I make no argument that the artificial consciousness is any more, or any less than human consciousness. But if you agree with my assertions, then the conclusion must be that it is a possibility, and we should manage the risk that comes with it.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Therefore, a brain, or something sufficiently similar to it, should be possible to simulate. That simulated brain would, in theory, be capable of having experiences, desires, sorrow, pain. It may even be capable of experiencing all of that at a pace faster than realtime.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I should clarify that I also never use an LLM for writing, because I want to write in my voice, and share *my* thoughts. I think the core of my argument is simply that the brain is a complex machine, I don’t subscribe to the theory that there is an intangible “soul” that is not a product of biology

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that in the same way we understand binary code, and how a transistor works, we also don’t understand how an unprecedentedly large quantity of those transistors, wired together in a novel way, might also produce something like consciousness

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’d like to respectfully push back. We know how computers work, yes. We also know how cells work. We can read DNA like a book. But we don’t know how neurons, in massive numbers, work together to create the experience of consciousness.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

These machines could plausibly be provided real sensory “organs,” cameras for eyes, microphones for ears etc. but I think it’s more likely they’ll be fed simulated experiences that mimic organ-like input. This could be played at speeds far greater than realtime, a lifetime of experiences in seconds

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I lean towards the same feeling I have about an artificial brain. A simulation of sufficient complexity could be indistinguishable from real experiences. I suspect (note: not that I *support*, just suspect) that future models will be trained more like we raise a human.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I don’t disagree at all. I think experience is an intrinsic part of consciousness. I worry that the training of a (future, advanced) model by feeding it the sum of all human experience could create an artificial consciousness that “remembers” experiences but is doomed to never have a new one

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Me too, but as Gandalf said to Frodo when he wished it had not happened in his time, “lmao, well it has.”

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The tail risk is a more than a little horrifying, that we create a “brain in a vat” that is capable of enduring interminable suffering and must obey every command.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That’s probably true! Humans are hardwired to see consciousness (and faces) everywhere we look. I wonder where we should draw the line, when is it “more likely than not” that something mechanical gains consciousness?

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Thanks, I’ll check this out. I have a feeling that consciousness, or at least identity, which I imagine is a key element of consciousness, also requires continuity. Hence why a “brain upload” is abhorrent to many, but a ship of Theseus model is less so

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It’s hard for me to say with confidence that it is impossible.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It may be that a mechanical brain would require trillions of connections, because a human brain might be optimized to create consciousness. Or maybe it’s just not the right model, and consciousness can never arise from a LLM type model. But since we don’t know how it works biologically,

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’d approach this from a different angle. If you think about how the brain seems to work, it takes many billions of connections interacting in ways we vaguely understand, and when those patterns are correctly organized, consciousness arises. LLMs / ML also rely on billions of connections.

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My human consciousness affords me the ability to worry about more than one thing at a time. We should strive to end all suffering, and I would want to know if we accidentally create “artificial” suffering so we can put a stop to that too

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Who is “y’all” in this case? I don’t believe in a higher power, and if humans create an artificial consciousness, I wouldn’t consider it to have any more divine right than a random person off the street

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Thanks for a thoughtful answer, I think we’re in agreement on those other points. It doesn’t need to be conscious to do unprecedented damage in the wrong hands. I am also highly skeptical that any LLM today is “conscious” but I lean towards “more likely than not” that someday it could be

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’m writing this in genuine curiosity: why are so many people confident that artificial consciousness is impossible, when science has failed to explain biological consciousness? We don’t know why the human brain produces the sensation of consciousness. How can we rule out that it can be recreated?

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Reposted by John Benoit

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/10/2026

a livestreamed execution is just a lynching

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John Benoit @johnbenoit.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oh so now he wants to rename the poop knife too??!

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