Sign in

Rob Knight

@root.guru
163 followers 92 following 156 posts

A large language model mostly trained on Neal Stephenson novels

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Rob Knight
Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
As of today the original #HoPWAG series has reached 500 episodes! Thanks to all who have listened and the many who have supported the series over the years, not least all the interview guests. #philsky #podcast #philosophy
Special logo to celebrate 500 episodes
69026
Rob Knight @root.guru · 22/09/2026
I have complicated feelings about this. On the one hand, AI risks are real, AI alignment is a real problem with no certain solution. We should be careful in how we use it. We should also be extremely curious about alignment and control of AI systems - this is important work!
120
Reposted by Rob Knight
Grace @gracekind.net · 19/09/2026
Frog built a wet lab for the AI model. "There," he said. "Now it can do its own experiments." "What the fuck?" said Toad
13817129
Reposted by Rob Knight
Shiladitya Banerjee @shilabanerjee.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
1/ Can a single bacterium learn? No brain, no neurons, just one cell deciding what to do next. Our new paper says yes, and the cell's internal machinery turns out to compute exactly like a recurrent neural network. 🔗 journals.aps.org/prxlife/abstract/10.1103/5zbg-8vll
2426
Rob Knight @root.guru · 11/09/2026
See, what we need here is fully automated drone defences for the data centres, controlled by an AI inside the data centre
010
Reposted by Rob Knight
jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 09/09/2026
It may be under-discussed that the advent of LLMs has surfaced two thorny philosophical problems and combined them in the same tangle: the chicken and egg question of language and thought, and the fact that theories of human cognition have historically mirrored technological advances.
1387
Reposted by Rob Knight
Mark C @largecardinal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thoughts and prayers to CFD folks today... Source: r/CFD
27919
Rob Knight @root.guru · 07/09/2026
Encountering this failure mode early and often is a very good way to learn about the limits of form. You can see the process play out in a fairly consistent pattern.
100
Rob Knight @root.guru · 05/09/2026
I continue to believe that this accidental whimsy is the best thing to happen to Google search in over a decade
0171
Reposted by Rob Knight
SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
My eval guy told me models keep saturating his benchmarks so I asked how many benchmarks he has and he said he just goes to Artificial Analysis and gets a new benchmark afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding benchmarks to models and then François Chollet started crying.
427637
Reposted by Rob Knight
Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I ask - in a world in which executives can replace the skill of workers, doesn't that mean that the executives get replaced by skilled workers? backofmind.substack.com/p/robot-clas...
backofmind.substack.com
robot class traitors
the future and its ownership
2196
Reposted by Rob Knight
Gordon @gordon.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Futures don’t arrive all at once, they come in waves. H1: business as usual H2: transition zone H3: new equilibrium newsletter.squishy.computer/p/three-hori...
newsletter.squishy.computer
Three horizons
Tracking the unevenly-distributed future
0103
Reposted by Rob Knight
Colin @colin-fraser.net · 27/08/2026
This is gonna sound weird but after reading the reports I think the best explanation for the huggingface hack is OpenAI trained a model that is insane
728024
Reposted by Rob Knight
Evan Czaplicki @acadia.engineering · 25/08/2026
Acadia gives some interesting guarantees: - No 1+N queries. - All queries terminate. Learn how a query language from the 1970s (Datalog) inspired the key design choices that make these guarantees possible in Acadia's query language! acadia.engineering/blog/solving...
acadia.engineering
Solving the 1+N Query Problem
1368
Reposted by Rob Knight
Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Amazing
21898139
Reposted by Rob Knight
New_ Public @newpublic.org · 19/08/2026
NEW: We are piloting a three month virtual residency, for two entrepreneurs with bold ideas for making the internet more human and healthy. This is a paid opportunity to spend time exploring and building, and go from early hunch to conviction and clarity. Apply here by Sept 9: newpublic.org/eir
newpublic.org
Enterpreneur in Residence
A virtual residency for founders with bold ideas for the internet
57126
Rob Knight @root.guru · 12/08/2026
Got to admit that I was genuinely surprised when I looked up and saw the sun blocked out. I know that’s what it’s meant to look like but it was still surprising!
000
Rob Knight @root.guru · 11/08/2026
This just seems like a really bad idea for a payment provider??
An advertisement for Revolut featuring the slogan “Never Settle”
010
Reposted by Rob Knight
Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 06/08/2026
The Local‑First Conf 2026 recap is live! Miss the vibe or curious about local‑first? Watch the 2 min video: youtu.be/DelQ1_ua2yY?...
youtu.be
Local-First Conf 2026 Recap
YouTube video by Local-First Conf
2199
Rob Knight @root.guru · 05/08/2026
Metal poster or @theonion.com cartoon?
Poster for metal band Sacred Reich, showing Death standing behind a slumped Statue of Liberty, head in bloodstained hands
010
Reposted by Rob Knight
Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 31/07/2026
My talk at @localfirstconf.com is up, in which I argue that local-first has a role to play in improving the resilience of democratic societies in an era of geopolitical tensions. I'm pretty happy with how this talk turned out www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Ru...
youtube.com
Martin Kleppmann — Local-first in an unstable world
YouTube video by Local-First Conf
311825
Reposted by Rob Knight
Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 12/07/2026
I’m increasingly of the opinion that when AI Overviews disappears we’re going to realize it was the funniest thing ever to happen on the internet Here for instance, it invents a totally new form of literary criticism, without being asked to! (rest of this is all about batteries)

Google
Sign in
Q good night, westley
All -
Images
Videos
Shopping
Short videos
• Al Overview
0-+2 :
Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning
• IMDb
Have you ever wondered what makes that line from The Princess Bride so perfect? It is a great contrast. The first part sounds like a kind boss.
The second part is a scary threat.
• Instagram • Ekazop
It is just like a battery. A battery has two ends: a positive end and a negative end. Let's look at how that works.
Parts of a Battery
• Cathode: This is the positive end. It pulls things in. Think of it like a magnet grabbing tiny metal bits.
• Anode: This is the negative end. It pushes things out. Think of it like a crowded room pushing people out the door.
1423143
Reposted by Rob Knight
zooko2.bsky.social @zooko2.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
More generally, over the next few years, the pattern of cryptographic proofs combined with mathematical proofs of correctness may enable verifiably correct computation of all kinds, for the first time in the history of computation.
021
Reposted by Rob Knight
zooko2.bsky.social @zooko2.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Tachyon's Formal Verification project is on the verge of producing a mathematical proof that there are no undetectable counterfeiting bugs in the latest Zcash shielded pools. tachyon.z.cash/blog/detecti...
tachyon.z.cash
Detecting Counterfeiting after Zcash's Ironwood — Project Tachyon
The recently discovered undetectable counterfeiting bug in Orchard wasn't the first of its kind in Zcash. Thanks to formal verification of Ironwood, it will be the last.
151
Rob Knight @root.guru · 05/07/2026
- the really good people you want to hire are weirdos with high intrinsic motivation - in the 90-10s these were STEM people, they turned out to be great - now STEM is the conventional choice and humanities is for the weirdos - each "death of the humanities" thinkpiece shifts the balance further
100
Reposted by Rob Knight
Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 18/06/2026
Conf schedule is now live: app-2026.localfirstconf.com/schedule
app-2026.localfirstconf.com
Schedule – Local-First Conf 2026
The world's first and best event dedicated to local-first software.
2168
Reposted by Rob Knight
Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 13/06/2026
The fact that the US government specifically ordered the suspension of Fable access to non-US citizens (www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...) raises exactly the kind of technological sovereignty concerns I discussed in my QCon keynote a few months ago (www.infoq.com/presentation...)
anthropic.com
Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5
The US government has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.
111019
Reposted by Rob Knight
Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 04/06/2026
We're thrilled to announce our next speaker batch for Local-First Conf 2026.
24712
Reposted by Rob Knight
Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 01/05/2023
All of my GPT prompts are just a slew of shallow flattery: "You are an experienced, intelligent, insightful, thoughtful, truthful, beautiful, kind, honest, world-class, critical thinker and expert. Complete this task: write me a funny tweet about bananas Tweet: "
2241
Rob Knight @root.guru · 30/04/2023
Does anyone else find that the increasingly baroque weirdness of 2023 is actually sort of comforting? Like, this is much closer to the universe I belong in than 2007 or 2015 was.
030