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Sebastian Benthall

@sbenthall.bsky.social
291 followers 577 following 291 posts

scientist, dad. working on neurosymbolic AI systems for computational economics. Research Scientist, International Computer Science Institute Research Director, New York University School of Law sbenthall.net - digifesto.com

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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
scikit-agent 0.2.0 is out. It adds multi-agent models: populations, aggregation, and equilibrium solvers, with new gallery examples of Cournot, Akerlof's lemons, differential privacy as a causal game, and AI-safety incentives. github.com/scikit-agent...
github.com
Release v0.2.0 · scikit-agent/scikit-agent
Multi-agent model representation Blocks can declare an entity class, such as a set of firms or a population of households, whose variables take one value per member. Equations that read across a c...
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
i agree there are lots of AI risks that are not existential death risks that are well worth de-risking
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
the potential of AI to cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes) AI X-risk is in the news cycle again. This time, it comes when AI companies have imminent IPOs and when their products are taking off. So while concerns about AI X-risk have been around for quite a while, and were part of…
digifesto.com
the potential of AI to cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes)
AI X-risk is in the news cycle again. This time, it comes when AI companies have imminent IPOs and when their products are taking off. So while concerns about AI X-risk have been around for quite a while, and were part of the motivating ideologies of many of the AI lab founders, we are being told (again) that this problem is especially urgent, now.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
scikit-agent 0.1.0 released! Well over a year ago I wrote about building something new. I'm pleased to say that now there is a 0.1.0 release of scikit-agent available. Like one does, I find that as I work on it, what was a simple idea expands, and I now understand that the project is indeed quite…
digifesto.com
scikit-agent 0.1.0 released!
Well over a year ago I wrote about building something new. I'm pleased to say that now there is a 0.1.0 release of scikit-agent available. Like one does, I find that as I work on it, what was a simple idea expands, and I now understand that the project is indeed quite technically ambitious. This first release is just a tiny part of what the library should be.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
brief theses on wealth and value There's a longer version of this argument to be made, but I wanted to see if I could present it briefly. What is wealth? Nominal financial worth -- in terms of, e.g. US dollars, and other fiat currency, is clearly not a good measure of wealth. Because it is often…
digifesto.com
brief theses on wealth and value
There's a longer version of this argument to be made, but I wanted to see if I could present it briefly. What is wealth? Nominal financial worth -- in terms of, e.g. US dollars, and other fiat currency, is clearly not a good measure of wealth. Because it is often based on speculative pricing. Because it is vulnerable to inflation.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
The Open Silicon Fallacy: How Panic Over Chinese Open-Weight Models Is Distorting American AI Policy digifesto.com/2026/07/22/t...
digifesto.com
The Open Silicon Fallacy: How Panic Over Chinese Open-Weight Models Is Distorting American AI Policy
The following article was written with Gemini Flash 3.6 “in the style of The Economist’s Bagehot”. It is an experiment in AI writing. The arguments and structure are mine. –…
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
some philosophical progress and next steps digifesto.com/2026/07/04/s...
digifesto.com
some philosophical progress, and next steps
I had a wonderful time at FAccT 2026 in Montreal. I was at the first FAT* in 2018 and thought it was doing something important — creating an intellectual space for serious thinking about powe…
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
cool
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
yes, it's pretty good at Tikz.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
naturalized ethics and natural law digifesto.com/2026/01/02/n...
digifesto.com
naturalized ethics and natural law
One thing that’s become clear to me lately is that I now believe that ethics can be naturalized. I also believe that there is in fact a form of ‘natural law’. By this I mean that …
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
really explains it
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
If I actually finish any of these 4-5 projects I'm working on, it's going to be so great.
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Reposted by Sebastian Benthall
NYU Engelberg Center @nyuengelberg.org · 09/12/2025
Thank you KAIST for hosting our Legal Challenges in the AI Era workshop! @jeannefromer.bsky.social, @michaelweinberg.org, @sbenthall.bsky.social, & Florencia Marotta-Wurgler are representing NYU in Seoul
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler on a panelJeanne Fromer presentsSeb Benthall presentsJeanne Fromer picks winners from the lucky box
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I remember when the big deal was whether their emotion manipulation study was ethical. Over a decade ago. They have been doing psychographic monitoring for a very long time. If there's something they don't know, it's because they choose not to know.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
But we can slip accidentally into it?
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
If human beings are relationally constituted, they are in part relationally constituted by the legal systems in which they dwell. If the legal system treats them as autonomous beings, then that is, more or less, the case, even if they have very complex gut biomes.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
At some point in either analysis or operations, distinctions must be drawn. Relations distinguished from other relations, their subjects, and objects. There are relational liberal theorists -- feminist inspired, etc. It's good work. But the body reemerges at the intersections of (A-B) and (A-C)
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
As for Eastern philosophy, Varela spent time at Naropa and was one of the people who connected Eastern meditation to Western neuroscience through e.g. the Mind and Life Institute. Rosch and Thompson who developed the embodied mind theories with him are also Buddhists.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Haraway is great at unassailable fancy rhetoric, and is a good foil to Luhmann in that unassailability. But taking Maturana and Varela as denying the relationality and entanglement of life is a misread, as both were in engaged in the ethical and phenomenological implications of their theory.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
So I would be interested to know what additional value add a holobiontic view offers over an enactivists or Luhmannian one. I think you are saying there's more hierarchical complexity in the substrate. Ok. But identity is about operational closure and reproduction of systems at every level.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
I.e. an "autopoietic" system is never "atomic" but always dynamically constituted from a substrate in a way that its identity is precariously maintained as an emergent property.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
The "boundary" is stable at the system level but permeable at the substrate level in Maturana's biology etc, which is quite profound and subtle. Point being that I'm not sure Harroway improves the expressivity of the theories of autopoiesis, which arguably already contain the critique of liberalism.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
In this line of thinking, an autonomous or autopoietic system is constituted by/within a substrate, and part of that process of constitution creates the system/boundary/environment distinctions.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
"autopoiesis" has its original definition from Maturana, biological systems, and its later definition from Luhman, for social systems. There was a rift between the two over this. Later enactivists like Varela moved away from it towards a "constitutive autonomy" which encompasses both contexts.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
I think this is all correct. This paper reaches a similar conclusion through a different route sbenthall.net/papers/aipss... So, sound statistical social science requires a computational economics that takes artificial life, not artificial intelligence, as it's modeling metaphor. This is my agenda!
sbenthall.net
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Reposted by Sebastian Benthall
Josh McCrain @joshmccrain.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
I'm very +1 the LeCun world model pivot.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Sampling issue, right? This is from a subpoena that was for trump related materials?
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Europe once again realizes that it can get a lot of money out of US big tech companies by enforcing laws
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
I think it's good now. I was worried about the endless shutdown -> SNAP riots -> martial law scenario for a bit there. But instead we are getting the beginnings of a robust countermotion. If and only if the crisis is really really really bad, there might be actual structural reform later.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
They are saying this is reciprocal US isn't sharing intelligence either.
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Reposted by Sebastian Benthall
Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Great piece by Fred Turner on the pivot from Californian ideology of connection (which built the web) to Texan ideology of extraction and theocracy thebaffler.com/salvos/the-t...
thebaffler.com
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
I am not aware of the V-model and will now look it up. Thanks!
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Reposted by Sebastian Benthall
Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 10/11/2025
drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/10/04/a...
drafts.interfluidity.com
A fertile corpse
drafts @ interfluidity
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
I was thinking today that we need something like Marr's levels, but for software system design. Level one is for functional specification. Level 2 technical design. Level 3 is implementation. Level 0 is incentives and politics of design. System errors can happen at all levels.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
This version isn't paywalled if that's the issue: [2308.02435] Designing Fiduciary Artificial Intelligence share.google/Eygrth3wVIY0...
share.google
Designing Fiduciary Artificial Intelligence
A fiduciary is a trusted agent that has the legal duty to act with loyalty and care towards a principal that employs them. When fiduciary organizations interact with users through a digital interface,...
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
I'm short, I agree. We address this somewhat in the article. The corporate person that operates the AI has the duties. Then there is a question of how they can design automated systems that are compliant.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Thanks for noticing.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
[2510.27628] Validity Is What You Need arxiv.org/abs/2510.27628
arxiv.org
Validity Is What You Need
While AI agents have long been discussed and studied in computer science, today's Agentic AI systems are something new. We consider other definitions of Agentic AI and propose a new realist definition...
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Oh, fiduciary duties for AI systems are a major research focus for me. Designing Fiduciary Artificial Intelligence | Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization share.google/zA5exvpnzTNo... If you're interested in this we should talk.
share.google
Designing Fiduciary Artificial Intelligence | Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
This is what fiduciary duties are for.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
This is the Ukrainification of the USA.
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Reposted by Sebastian Benthall
Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
RIP Alison Knowles. Damn. hyperallergic.com/1054017/alis...
hyperallergic.com
Alison Knowles, the First Woman of Fluxus, Dies at 92
“People don’t touch art,” she once said. “That’s one of the problems.”
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
When will the Government shutdown end? share.google/2WvCZK7Lrzp0...
share.google
When will the Government shutdown end?
Polymarket | This market will resolve to the calendar date range (ET) of the first day after September 30, 2025 which the U.S. The Office of Personnel Manage...
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
I do hope we get Congress back. Truly a "don't know what you got 'til it's gone" moment for me.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Honestly relieved that my child fell asleep on the way to the Halloween parade and won't let himself be woken up so I too can nap in the car.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
I predict that they will be opportunistic about whichever ways lower their energy costs and take sides as little as possible.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
I think the left identitarian tendency is to look for the secret or unconscious motives. Revealing the bias that was beneath the surface. The need for full woke repentance and conversion of sinners. Nice lefty white guy with secret Nazi tattoo feels like that pattern. But cartoonishly hyperreal.
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Sebastian Benthall @sbenthall.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
There are ever increasingly impressive demos of high-tech machines promising a transformed future. But somehow sustaining automation of even universal basics remains a challenge. Kitchen appliances break down. We haven't yet mastered the smoke alarm that doesn't go off when you fry stuff. Etc.
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