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Matt Beane

@mattbeane.bsky.social
525 followers 131 following 68 posts

Studying work involving intelligent machines, especially robots. @MITSloan PhD, @Ucsb Asst Prof, @Stanford and @MIT Digital Fellow, @Tedtalks @Thinkers50

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Reposted by Matt Beane
Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
This includes many of my papers, too. The point I am making is the findings in careful academic research likely represents a lower bound of AI capabilities at this point.
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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
I can’t i just … i can’t www.404media.co/anthropic-cl...
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Daniel Rock @danielrock.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Hi Everyone! We're hosting our Wharton AI and the Future of Work Conference on 5/21-22. Last year was a great event with some of the top papers on AI and work. Paper submission deadline is 3/3. Come join us! Submit papers here: forms.gle/ozJ5xEaktXDE...
forms.gle
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Exciting new hobby project in the offing related to AI and skill. Involves a childhood passion, a wild leap into the unknown, made real via an order from Amazon just now. Will be 100% cool, I will be documenting things, sharing eventually. Feels like April 2023 again!
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
The Silo is so good. Just superb. This generation's answer to the BSG remake.
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Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
My hobby horse. You can simulate a rocket all you want, and use more energy on computation than the actual rocket would, but you won't get to orbit until you ignite rocket fuel. What if all the energy we are spending on simulating learning is not the juice we really need to make intelligence?
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 31/12/2024
Here's my end-of-year review of things we learned out about LLMs in 2024 - we learned a LOT of things simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/... Table of contents:

    The GPT-4 barrier was comprehensively broken
    Some of those GPT-4 models run on my laptop
    LLM prices crashed, thanks to competition and increased efficiency
    Multimodal vision is common, audio and video are starting to emerge
    Voice and live camera mode are science fiction come to life
    Prompt driven app generation is a commodity already
    Universal access to the best models lasted for just a few short months
    “Agents” still haven’t really happened yet
    Evals really matter
    Apple Intelligence is bad, Apple’s MLX library is excellent
    The rise of inference-scaling “reasoning” models
    Was the best currently available LLM trained in China for less than $6m?
    The environmental impact got better
    The environmental impact got much, much worse
    The year of slop
    Synthetic training data works great
    LLMs somehow got even harder to use
    Knowledge is incredibly unevenly distributed
    LLMs need better criticism
    Everything tagged “llms” on my blog in 2024
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Jaime Teevan @teevan.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
In 2024 we learned a lot about how AI is impacting work. People report that they're saving 30 minutes a day using AI (aka.ms/nfw2024), and randomized controlled trials reveal they’re creating 10% more documents, reading 11% fewer e-mails, and spending 4% less time on e-mail (aka.ms/productivity...).
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Independent evaluations of OpenAI’s o3 suggest that it passed math & reasoning benchmarks that were previously considered far out of reach for AI including achieving a score on ARC-AGI that was associated with actually achieving AGI (though the creators of the benchmark don’t think it o3 is AGI)
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Rita McGrath @rgmcgrath.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Join me by the fireside this Friday with Matt Beane as we dive into one of today’s biggest workforce challenges: upskilling at scale. 📈 Linke below to hear the full discussion on Friday, December 13 at 11 am EST! linktr.ee/RitaMcGrath @mattbeane.bsky.social
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
I propose a workshop. Most engineers/CS working on AI presume away well established, profound brakes on AI diffusion. Most social scientists presume away how AI use could reshape those brakes. Let's gather these groups, examine these brakes 1-by-1, make grounded predictions.
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Reposted by Matt Beane
Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Models like o1 suggest that people won’t generally notice AGI-ish systems that are better than humans at most intellectual tasks, but which are not autonomous or self-directed Most folks don’t regularly have a lot of tasks that bump up against the limits of human intelligence, so won’t see it
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Grateful for the opportunity to visit and learn from the professionals at the L&DI conference. And very glad to hear you found my talk so valuable, Garth! Means a lot.
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Tom Williams @tomwilliams.phd · 03/12/2024
I made an HRI Starter Pack! If you are a Human-Robot Interaction or Social Robotics researcher and I missed you while scrolling through bsky's suggestions, just ping me and I'll add ya. go.bsky.app/CsnNn3s
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
David Meyer (v.) /ˈdeɪvɪd ˈmaɪ.ər/ To attribute complex, intentional design or deeper meaning to simple emergent behaviors of large language models, especially when such behaviors are more likely explained by straightforward technical constraints or training artifacts.
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Bob Sutton @bobsutton.net · 27/11/2024
My Thanksgiving post. A Kurt Vonnegut poem. He talks with Joe Heller (Catch 22 fame) about a billionaire. Key part: Joe said, "I've got something he can never have" And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?" And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough" www.linkedin.com/pulse/kurt-v...
linkedin.com
Kurt Vonnegut, Joe Heller, and How to Think Like a Mensch
This story remains my favorite Thanksgiving message; it reminds me to be grateful for what I have and of the evils of jealousy and destructive competition. I first posted it on my work matters blog mo...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Oh my dear god this is an incredible study.
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Not every day your work gets a healthy mention in the Sunday @nytimes.com! The software talent market went into freefall in July of 2022. Sarah Kessler takes us inside the maelstrom by investigating the impact on graduates of coding bootcamps. Great read. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/24/b...
nytimes.com
Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?
Coding boot camps once looked like the golden ticket to an economically secure future. But as that promise fades, what should you do? Keep learning, until further notice.
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Reposted by Matt Beane
Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Easy to get the wrong impression around here, but when you actually survey students, teachers, and parents they love AI. In the survey, it is people who never used it who don’t like it. www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/learning/the...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Head to head twitter/bluesky social science test: What are your go-to, recent empirical papers on surveillance and technology?
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Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Culture is definitely gonna play a part, but architecture is going to be key to creating a positive social media environment Bluesky has given us so many tools like this to cut out all the crap that made even pre-Elon Twitter so toxic
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
When people ask me which model to use for writing, I say Claude. Have for months. This is now my go-to example for explaining why. To get why Claude is better, first read and get why Claude is better. To break this recursion, just compare their explanations of recursion - you'll see.
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Reposted by Matt Beane
Mikell Taylor @mikell.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
I made a list of some of my favorite robotics people to follow, if any of former RoboticsTwitter is still looking for folks over here bsky.app/profile/did:...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
What a lovely gift on a Friday: using LLMs (admittedly, by playing to stereotypes) to confound scammers through a convincing "granny" avatar that will chat their time away. Vid worth watching for a laugh. Not all disinformation harms the consumer! news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-d...
news.virginmediao2.co.uk
O2 unveils Daisy, the AI granny wasting scammers’ time - Virgin Media O2
O2 has today unveiled the newest member of its fraud prevention team, 'Daisy'. As ‘Head of Scammer Relations’, this state-of-the-art AI Granny's mission is to talk with fraudsters and waste as much of...
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Reposted by Matt Beane
Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
!!! US power grid added battery equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors in past four years www.theguardian.com/environment/...
a graph showing hockey stick growtn for utility-scale battery capacity in the U.S., from almost nothing in 2014 through a slow growth to 2020, and then exponential, almost vertical growth after, through 2024, to 21.4 GW of capacity as of August 2024
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Pat Loika @patloika.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Happy Circulatory System Walking Through The Kitchen Day to those who celebrate.
A panel from Watchmen. Doctor Manhattan appears in a kitchen on November 10 as a circulatory system as he is reconstituting himself. Art by Dave Gibbons.
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
The action on Eugene's post - and his post to begin with - have instantly convinced me that @bsky.app is beautiful. I am here for it. And will not be bringing my typical technotwitter self here. More nerd/geek/xkcd, more fun/play/good cheer, more aggro sharing of wondrous delights. Woot!
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Reposted by Matt Beane
John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 07/11/2024
We’re going to hear lots of stories about which people, policies and rhetoric are to blame for the Democrats’ defeat. Some of those stories may even be true! But an underrated factor is that 2024 was an absolutely horrendous year for incumbents around the world 👇 
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 09/02/2024
I'm so grateful and exited to share that my book will be published on June 11th! It's called "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" Available for preorder now, here's a bit of the story: www.wildworldofwork.org/p/big-inside...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
2024: the year we give genAI a body 2023 brought us a powerful but intangible general purpose technology. Roboticists have put it to work quickly, and 2024 will make a mockery of 2023. But what does this mean for the world of work? www.wildworldofwork.org/p/2024-the-y...
wildworldofwork.org
2024: the year we give genAI a body
2023 brought us a powerful but intangible general purpose technology. Roboticists have put it to work quickly, and 2024 will make a mockery of 2023. But what does this mean for the world of work?
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 03/01/2024
Zuck, icymi, this would be a pretty straightforward bolt-on for the HI compound - specifically targeted to off-the-grid implementation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xf...
youtube.com
How to Build a Lava Moat (with xkcd)
Where to Buy "How To" by Randall Munroe:· PRH.com: https://bit.ly/2L2G5hy· Amazon: https://bit.ly/2zfy974· Barnes and Noble: https://...
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Reposted by Matt Beane
Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · 01/01/2024
Just published my sixth annual review of my Jan 1st, 2018, predictions on autonomous driving cars (+electric+flying), robotics and AI, and human spaceflight. The hype around them all meant that people were expecting large scale deployments in unrealistic timeframes. rodneybrooks.com/predictions-...
rodneybrooks.com
Predictions Scorecard, 2024 January 01 – Rodney Brooks
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 28/12/2023
AI is fast. Automation is slow. Can they meet? New Substack post with shoutouts to new work from Nick Otis et. al., Bob Sutton, Andy McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson and Daniel Rock. www.wildworldofwork.org/p/ai-is-fast...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 11/12/2023
Guess what? If you use genAI and need people to trust your expertise, you should probably have a genAI portfolio. This is a new genre, afaik first researched and drafted by Alexis Chew, an undergrad student of mine. Her research and a template, here: www.wildworldofwork.org/p/genai-mean...
wildworldofwork.org
GenAI means it's harder to trust expertise
When genAI can give us high quality ideas, assessments, and solutions on demand, it's harder to tell if we're dealing with "real" skill. The way forward is simple, not easy.
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 09/12/2023
GenAI means it's harder to trust expertise When genAI can give us high quality ideas, assessments, and solutions on demand, it's harder to tell if we're dealing with "real" skill. The way forward is conceptually simple, not easy in practice. www.wildworldofwork.org/p/genai-mean...
wildworldofwork.org
GenAI means it's harder to trust expertise
When genAI can give us high quality ideas, assessments, and solutions on demand, it's harder to tell if we're dealing with "real" skill. The way forward is simple, not easy.
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 28/11/2023
New Pew research on teen genAI use shows two huge problems. 81% say they haven't used genAI. 20% said it was appropriate to use it for writing essays. "All aboard" isn't right, but all students should dabble to understand. Teachers, admins can help with that. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 24/11/2023
There's missing music between Thanksgiving and Christmas. At least, there was. I give you "Bells, Bows, Greens, Potatoes": chat.openai.com/share/9619cc...
chat.openai.com
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 23/11/2023
IYKYK:
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 12/11/2023
Programming social machines Generative AI responds to social cues in your instructions. Nobody knows why, or how to handle it, but we do know: our relationship with automation is changed forever. www.wildworldofwork.org/p/programmin...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 06/11/2023
OpenAI's event today - announcing a tool for building specialized ai assistants - just initialized a bunch of agents that will go create those ai assistants. ...it just so happens those agents were human users: x.com/azeem/status...
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
Because this is a new place: let me just say how frustrating it is for people to look at me *only* when speaking to me and my wife. The only tactic I can find that works is making eye contact with her. Then they have to look at her, too. But it is utter horseshit, and I want a better counter. Ideas?
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
Don't Let AI Dumb You Down Using AI can improve results... and deskill us. Here's how to boost skill instead. www.wildworldofwork.org/p/dont-let-a...
wildworldofwork.org
Don't Let AI Dumb You Down
Using AI can improve results... and deskill us. Here's how to boost skill instead.
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Alex Blechman @alexblechman.bsky.social · 06/10/2023
Twitter is doing a new type of Ship of Theseus experiment, how much boat can you remove while still calling it a boat. Is one wood plank a boat. Is the ocean a boat
News article saying Twitter is removing ability to see interaction counts (likes, reposts, comments) on timeline
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
When it's time to change... we change. Here's my Substack: www.wildworldofwork.org I'll publish every couple weeks on this wild world of work we now inhabit: how we're handling intelligent tech and how we could do better. I couldn't ask for better early readers than you folks: please subscribe!
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 14/10/2023
HERE's a key question from an undergrad in my class: "how do we prove our genAI skills to potential employers, since that's going to be valued in most fields? I'm struggling - there are no standardized certificates or curricula!" Ideas? Building skills with new tech is easier than signaling them?
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Matt Beane @mattbeane.bsky.social · 10/10/2023
There was no last straw. Just the realization that compassion, curiosity, and candor are a precious cocktail, to be drunk daily with friends - known and unknown. Hi, bluesky! Hopeful for our future.
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