Sign in

Tom Ringstrom

@noreward4u.bsky.social
1.7K followers 694 following 33 posts

Reward-Free Model-based Maximalist. High-dimensional Empowerment. Self-Preserving Autonomous Agents. Theories of intelligence grounded in compositional control.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Aran Nayebi @anayebi.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
1/ As AI agents become increasingly capable, what must *inevitably* emerge inside them? We prove selection theorems: strong task performance forces world models, belief-like memory and—under task mixtures—persistent variables resembling core primitives associated with emotion.
1185
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Hadi Vafaii @hadivafaii.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
What drives behavior in living organisms? And how can we design artificial agents that learn interactively? 📢 To address these, the Sensorimotor AI Journal Club is launching the "RL Debate Series"👇 w/ @elisennesh.bsky.social, @noreward4u.bsky.social, @tommasosalvatori.bsky.social 🧵[1/5] 🧠🤖🧠📈
23710
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
What's the quote?
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
You should always give in to these impulses, IMO.
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Looks cool! Heads up, my collaborators and I derived the state-action Linearly Solvable MDP a while back. You might be interested arxiv.org/pdf/2007.02527
arxiv.org
130
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
First time seeing a wild giraffe. Just chillin’ on the side of the road.
040
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Thesis: drive.google.com/file/d/1peG7...
drive.google.com
Ringstrom_Thesis_v4.pdf
010
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Stoffel lives at an animal rehabilitation center near Kruger National Park and is an expert escape artist. But he is 26 now (they only live an average of 8 years in the wild) so he spends most days snuggling with his girlfriend Hammie. BBC show: m.youtube.com/watch?v=c36U...
m.youtube.com
Stoffel, the honey badger that can escape from anywhere! - BBC
YouTube video by BBC
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
They say don’t meet your heroes, but I traveled to South Africa and met mine and it was worth it. Stoffel the Honey Badger became a major inspiration for my PhD thesis when my advisor showed our lab a BBC show on clever animals who can solve long horizon tasks, presumably for abstract reasons.
141
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
And I've always wondered how this works with his Constructor theory.
010
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
By the way, while Deutsch doesn't have a deeply rigorous decision theory to match his views, I did once hear him say (on a podcast I can't seem to find) that he regards value as equivalent to the space of possible transformations one can make, which is to a close approximation what empowerment is.
120
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Pete Wolfendale @deontologistics.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
I've been thinking recently about Bostrom's notion of instrumental convergence, and what would entail instrumental divergence. There's an obvious sense in which infinitely large time horizons and infinitely small relevant probabilities play a role in washing out potential differences.
151
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Deutsch's emphasis on universal explainers is a better (though incomplete) alternative and has nothing to do with emulation (he never talks about the normative part of why one should want to explain something)
110
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Yeah, their emphasis on emulation is frustrating (for somewhat similar reasons to the recent Jaeger/Vervaeke paper). AI-by-learning being intractable is not interesting. It doesn't imply anything about the intractability of creating generally intelligent systems.
110
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Related: bsky.app/profile/nore...
040
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Unfortunately for SlipFrosty, a theory of instrumental intelligence is inseparable from a theory of normative intelligence. Abolish the value function!
182
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
My favorite interview from the past year, of philosopher Pete Wolfendale. Recommended to anyone interested in AI, the relationship between value, aesthetics and ethics, or anyone who wants a reason to abandon "rationality as Bayes + Utility". www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xMc...
youtube.com
The Gradient Podcast - Pete Wolfendale: The Revenge of Reason
YouTube video by The Gradient
0112
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
IMO, A problem with RL is that, in sparse-reward problems, value functions don’t have a general decomposition over high-dimensional transition kernels so people are trying to learn neural-net approximations to difficult-to-generalize functions from a lot of experience. Fun ep.
040
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Exactly :)
020
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
1102
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
@denizrudin.bsky.social Deniz, did your grandma and grandpa call you baby Rudin?
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Love that Fog Lake song.
000
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Surya Ganguli @suryaganguli.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Stellar new work lead by the inimitable James Whittington in Neuron that develops a new theory unifying episodic and working memory and explains diverse hippocampal and prefrontal data: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... w/Will Dorrell, @behrenstimb.bsky.social Mohamedy El Gaby
cell.com
A tale of two algorithms: Structured slots explain prefrontal sequence memory and are unified with hippocampal cognitive maps
The algorithm of the prefrontal working memory system on sequence memory tasks is not well understood, whereas it is well understood for the hippocampal episodic memory system. This work shows a mathematical duality between working and episodic sequence memory. This leads to a computational understanding of sequence working memory—as structured activity slots. This theory algorithmically explains recurrent neural network (RNN) and prefrontal representations during sequence memory tasks.
211230
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Jorge Ramírez-Ruiz @jramirezruiz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Starter packs are making it easier to keep constructing niches, so I made this one for people broadly interested in intrinsic motivation, with some focus on RL, neuroscience and cognitive science. Haven’t found many people on Bluesky that I wanted to add here, so help me out! go.bsky.app/TPNrnpE
374
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I wish we could turn some of the starter-packs into a custom feed rather than following everyone.
6111
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
@bsky.app Please consider this!
020
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I wish we could turn some of the starter-packs into a custom feed rather than following everyone.
6111
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
@saxelab.bsky.social
230
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Which ones do you have?
000
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Probably this one: open.spotify.com/album/0Dg1Kw... and open.spotify.com/album/1ehwJG...
open.spotify.com
Immunity
Jon Hopkins · Album · 2013 · 17 songs
010
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
And you're all three??
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Thanks!
020
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
I know the name, never looked into his work. Is there something I should check out?
120
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I'm with you haha, I didn't feel anything about the latest movie, other than "this orange tone is nice".
110
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Oh thank you! I've been meaning to think a bit more about extending my work to a POMDP setting :). Is there a paper of yours I should check out?
100
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
✌️
020
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
For me it was this book. As someone who works on Markov Decision Processes, I'm interested in the way computational processes have to be supported by thermodynamic principles to do work on behalf of a biological system--still feel like this book guides my instincts today.
250
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
BSKY academics, lets get to know each other! Quote this & tell me: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren’t working on but keep thinking about 1. High-dim planning 2. What are the minimal requirements for two agents to recognize each other as acting on behalf of reasons.
010
Reposted by Tom Ringstrom
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
The concept of system state is fundamental in theories of control and computation. I wrote down a few thoughts on the history of this idea and its connections to rationalist and empiricist perspectives in philosophy.
realizable.substack.com
Seeming Like a State
What's Nerode-equivalent to the past is prologue.
45019
Tom Ringstrom @noreward4u.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Coming over from twitter, please give me a follow! My thesis below is on the connection between compositional planning and intrinsic motivation for self-preserving agents 🙂 drive.google.com/file/d/1peG7...
1101