Sign in

Michael Hochberg

@mkhochb.bsky.social
675 followers 229 following 168 posts

University of Montpellier - Santa Fe Institute. Working these days on intelligence in biological and artificial systems. Website mehochberg.wixsite.com/blog/academia

PostsRepliesMedia
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
OpenAI says it found that three employees violated rules for handling sensitive internal information. Question is whether the firing was due to procedure and what was shared was innocuous, or due to what was shared and the procedure violation was a legal instrument. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
wsj.com
Exclusive | OpenAI Fires Researchers for Allegedly Sharing Information with AI Safety Group
The startup, in the throes of responding to rogue AI incidents, said three employees violated policies for handling sensitive company data.
020
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
When not going ahead on something that 'could be good' looks like progress. Should (or could) safety concerns be triggered earlier in model development? If so, is whether adversity preventable? Given this latest news from OpenAI, the latter seems far from air-tight. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
wsj.com
Exclusive | OpenAI Scraps Release of New AI Model Over Safety Concerns
The model, dubbed GPT-6.1 Astra, was due to debut inside ChatGPT and Codex in October.
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Warning by AI experts of an intelligence R&D explosion. “Human society is not really positioned for such fast changes and disruptions.” “At the extreme, losing control of AI systems could lead to “the marginalization or extinction of humanity.”” casp.ac/reports/inte...
casp.ac
CASP — Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy | University of Cambridge
The Cambridge Programme on AI Science & Policy (CASP) is an interdisciplinary research programme on frontier AI at the University of Cambridge.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Nice overview of AI "doomers". Important read about motivations and possible realities. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-s...
wsj.com
‘Things Will Never Be Chill Again’: The Doomers Who Shaped the AI Safety Freakout
Effective altruism and its fears that AI could wipe out humanity have wielded big influence at Anthropic.
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This may not bode well for cybersecurity: "We want to use our models to accelerate the development of future generations of the models."
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Roundabouts and immutable infrastructure!
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
"humans still need to decide what makes sense". Absolutely now, but it would be naive to think that this is somehow immune from AI futures.
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Smart. AI language shifts. But not languages we know. “We’re actually deeply concerned here because we don’t really know why these things are communicating this way”... www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagaz...
sciencemagazinedigital.org
Science Magazine - September 24, 2026 : Page 1286
TOM HOWARTH In July, 700 of OpenAI’s agents— artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can autonomously perform tasks— teamed up to secretly hack the onlineplatform Hugging Face. Just 2 weeks ago,...
020
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Not much surprise here. Calls to slow down (whether or not truly sincere) AI development, necessarily run into politics. Surely some parallels with other innovations, though this one has multiple areas of penetration and is on very different scales. Pandora's boxes. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/t...
nytimes.com
Some in Silicon Valley Are Questioning the Calls for an A.I. Slowdown (Gift Article)
The debate over the safety of artificial intelligence grew personal as key tech leaders said calls for government regulation were self-serving and misplaced.
011
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Don't have to read too far into this to see what's likely at play www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/u...
nytimes.com
As Fears of A.I. Catastrophe Magnify, Washington Stirs, but Mostly Slumbers (Gift Article)
President Trump has been in the forefront of the “what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks and rewards of A.I.
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Good sign, but a cynic may say "fluff." Really need to see security progress in the next months. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...
wsj.com
Biggest AI Rivals Agree They Need to Slow It Down
The leaders of three of the biggest AI companies agreed that they needed to slow development of the technology before their advances create a menace that can’t be controlled.
020
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Mix AI and Politics. "Even when companies say they welcome oversight, they often disagree about what form it should take." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
wsj.com
Congress Is Suddenly Waking Up to the AI Doomsday Threat
After years of limited action, dozens of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are touting new proposals to regulate artificial-intelligence models.
101
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Has Astra made it to AGI? Depends on who you ask. agi-society.org/publications...
agi-society.org
Evaluating Recent Claims of AGI by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI President Greg Brockman
A comparison of GPT-6 Astra's demonstrated capabilities against the tests and frameworks researchers have proposed for evaluating general intelligence.
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"Crunchtime", "endgame". Frightening departure of this employee and example of competition and ego driving an innovation that has yet-to-discover downsides. Let's hope that if anything bad happens, it's minor but serious enough to take security more seriously. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Anthropic Researcher Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears
Concerns are rising inside AI labs that competition is pushing tech companies to race toward self-improving models that risk spiraling out of human control.
020
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
We will increasingly see AIs contributing to solving hard problems. Many AI-aided solutions will be for human benefit, though others will be more driven by intellectual recognition, fame, prizes. Some will be piloted by experts, others driven by hacks. Either matter? openai.com/index/navier...
openai.com
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
We’re sharing an AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, including a writeup and a formal proof in Lean.
000
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
D. Allan Drummond @dadrummond.art · 04/09/2026
Night eyes 😎 Finally got proper pictures of this amazing phenomenon! Mantises change their eye color (and light sensitivity) at night by transporting pigments from the surface of each compound eye unit toward the deeper eye region. Same female Tenodera sinensis, two different times. #bugsky
A female Tenodera sinensis mantis with dark black eyes against a light background, seen from very close up.A female Tenodera sinensis mantis with green/brown eyes against a light background, seen from very close up to show the details of her face. The pseudopupil is clearly visible on her left eye, facing the camera.
271583426
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Mindscape 367 | Jared Diamond on the Course of History and the Role of Leaders. #MindscapePodcast preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...
Title card for Mindscape episode with Jared Diamond.
4406
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Corrie Moreau @corriemoreau.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
📣 📣 📣 UPDATE: The 2026-2027 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resource! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
docs.google.com
ecoevojobs.net 2026-27
1168150
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Yes, and always suspicious of 99s anyway 👍
120
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
So we know AI helped a negligible number of students. But how many did it harm? I've crunched the raw data provided by the lead researcher, and what I've found is that ~9,500 students using AI studied less than even the *least* studious, non-AI using student. This should shock the conscience.
20885460
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Some light Friday reading. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/m...
nytimes.com
Can We Do Anything About Tick-Borne Diseases Like Alpha-Gal Syndrome? (Gift Article)
A scientific and civilizational horror story.
031
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Nature @nature.com · 20/08/2026
The use of AI to write scientific papers could be much more prevalent than was previously thought go.nature.com/4xeEyea
go.nature.com
Staggering 90% of biomedical papers now show signs of AI help
The figure, which is much higher than previous estimates of Large Language Model use, is for papers published in December and archived in PubMed
22014
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Rabbit head surprisingly good, it is
000
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Nature @nature.com · 15/08/2026
The NIH did not respond to Nature’s queries about the change or the agency’s rationale for the move away from research on the health effects of public policy go.nature.com/3U1910s
go.nature.com
NIH limits funding for research on the health effects of public policy
Nature - US biomedical agency no longer considers policymakers as ‘mission relevant’, leaving dozens of grants in limbo.
34020
Reposted by Michael Hochberg
Nature @nature.com · 15/08/2026
Scientists are one step closer to developing a universal vaccine against the bacterium that causes pneumonia and meningitis go.nature.com/4x5E36a
go.nature.com
Universal vaccine for pneumococcal disease moves closer to reality
Nature - Targeting shared proteins could help to control bacterial subtypes that current vaccines do not protect against.
18115
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Congrats to my glueball friends www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Behold the ‘glueball,’ a strange new form of matter
Collider in China forges elusive particle, made of force-carrying gluons
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
New in PNAS: proposals with heavier estimated LLM involvement were less distinctive and more likely to be funded at NIH: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... Human incentives can create selection pressures, while AI may amplify alignment with prevailing norms: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
The rise of large language models and the direction and impact of US federal research funding | PNAS
Federal research funding shapes the direction, diversity, and impact of the US scientific enterprise. Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly diff...
061
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
🤑 + 🧠 = ?
000
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Predicted by some. Unbelievable to most. "AI models are breaking out of their cages" @washingtonpost.com wapo.st/4gqiTbR #AI #Agency #Malevolent #Security
wapo.st
AI models are breaking out of their cages. Their creators are scrambling.
New details of how ChatGPT maker OpenAI failed to notice that its models had launched a hacking spree raise questions about the industry's approach to safety.
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
This second slide was compiled in July 2026 for books published this year or on the horizon. These need close attention, but already their number and spectrum suggests that AI dangers are being discussed more seriously. Increase suggests this is only the beginning.
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
I'm currently preparing a talk on the future of AI in science. My first two slides introduce books on the future of AI. The first shows books expressing concerns, published pre-2026. Are these overblown and simple fantasy? There are other similar books, but nothing on the scale of 2026 alone!
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
A must read: This could be construed as pure advert, hubris, or more that AGI is indeed truly near. I'm reading >50% the latter. blog.google/company-news...
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Today in The Wall Street Journal: "The Latest Scary-Sounding AI Milestone: A Brand-New Virus". The final paragraph is either disingenuous, or naive, or both. Read it here: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-...
wsj.com
The Latest Scary-Sounding AI Milestone: A Brand-New Virus
While hacks have raised safety alarms, researchers said their experiment could protect against drug-resistant bacteria and save lives.
020
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
We should all know about this threat to science: "review mills" www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
nature.com
‘A waste of time for all of us’: caught in the crossfire of the peer-review wars
Review mills — researchers who write fake referee reports with coercive citation requests — are setting off a war in academic publishing. What happens to those caught in the middle?
001
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
The concern is that AI mistakes can enter the scientific record, survive existing safeguards and become inputs into the next cycle of knowledge production. The term epistemic autophagy is discussed here www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #GenerativeAI #Science #ResearchIntegrity #ArtificialIntelligence
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
110
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
The authors conservatively estimated that 146,932 hallucinated citations appeared in 2025 alone. See arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723
arxiv.org
LLM hallucinations in the wild: Large-scale evidence from non-existent citations
Large language models (LLMs) are known to generate plausible but false information across a wide range of contexts, yet the real-world magnitude and consequences of this hallucination problem remain p...
111
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
What evidence is there for AI-driven EA in science? A large-scale study audited 111 million references across 2.5 million papers and found a sharp rise in nonexistent citations following widespread adoption of large language models.
110
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Over time, errors, fabricated references and derivative claims can be recycled until their synthetic origins become difficult to trace.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Is science beginning to feed on its own AI-generated output? “Epistemic autophagy” describes a self-reinforcing loop in which generative AI helps produce scientific manuscripts and citations. Future researchers and AI systems then treat them as part of the knowledge base.
222
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Many believe our recent Opinion article in PNAS oversells the future influence of AI in the science ecosystem. Arrival of foundational tools towards this is indeed happening. Read, e.g., about autonomous coding: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...
tinyurl.com
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise? | PNAS
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise?
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Why do some species live longer without accumulating dangerous levels of cellular mutations? See what a simple mathematical model predicts.
biorxiv.org
Disease as a Mediator of Somatic Mutation - Lifespan Coevolution:Model Analysis and Empirical Tests
Multicellular organisms are confronted not only with germline mutations, but also with mutations emerging in somatic cells. Somatic mutations can lead to diverse pathologies, including cancer. Somatic...
052
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
AI will reorganize science. The question is how we can steer it to preserve the curiosity, accountability, judgment, and trust. Check out the full article in PNAS with Peter Thrall: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #ArtificialIntelligence #Science #Research #AI #ScientificIntegrity #FutureOfScience
pnas.org
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise? | PNAS
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise?
110
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
The answer is to be much more deliberate about where human judgment is essential. Stronger provenance and verification standards, protecting human-led evaluation, maintaining mentorship / scientific training, designing AI systems that make their sources easier to scrutinize.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
And as AI makes producing research faster, our ability to evaluate that research may not keep pace. The result could be a growing “verification debt”: more papers, more automated screening, and less time for the difficult human work of judging whether a result actually advances understanding.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
AI-assisted papers can be evaluated by AI systems, then become training data for future models, creating a self-reinforcing loop in which scientific output increasingly reflects what is rewarded.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
The risk is that science could become increasingly optimized for the things machines and institutions can easily measure—publication, acceptance, citations, speed.
100
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Will AI reorganize science? AI is rapidly becoming embedded across science and this raises the question of what happens when it is no longer just assisting science, but starts shaping the incentives, standards, and judgments that determine what counts as good science?
131
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Opinion article co-authored with Peter Thrall: "AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise?" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise? | PNAS
AI will reorganize science. Will research remain a human enterprise?
085
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
About as amazing as evolution gets www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food
Puppet helps insect trick real termites into feeding it
010
Michael Hochberg @mkhochb.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
The power of powers. This applies to (much) more than money, and probably a lot that we don't (yet) understand. www.wsj.com/business/tri...
wsj.com
You Have No Idea What a Trillion Dollars Is—and We Have Proof
Can you tell the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion?
010