Reposted by Blake Richardslastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Honestly I think it's a bit of a fools' errand to try and get people to stop anthropomorphising LLMs. I say my computer is angry at me if it beeps too loud. 4354942
Reposted by Blake RichardsBlaise Agüera y Arcas @blaiseaguera.bsky.social · 25/09/2026This week marks one year since “What Is Intelligence?” was published. 1127
Reposted by Blake RichardsMila - Institut québécois d'IA @mila-quebec.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Bravo à Blake Richards, McGill/Mila qui remporte le prestigieux prix Schmidt Sciences Polymath 2026 ! Une reconnaissance de son parcours remarquable et de ses ambitions pour l'avenir de l'IA et des neurosciences ! www.schmidtsciences.org/2026-polymat... 061
Reposted by Blake RichardsMila - Institut québécois d'IA @mila-quebec.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Congratulations to Blake Richards, McGill/Mila, on winning the prestigious 2026 Schmidt Sciences Polymath Award! A well-deserved recognition of his remarkable journey and his bold vision for the future of AI and neuroscience! lnkd.in/gRDPtGVY 151
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I’m beyond honoured to be named a 2026 @schmidtsciences.bsky.social Polymath. With US$2.5 million over five years, I’ll be able to pursue an interdisciplinary project to combine quantitative and qualitative data to better capture human neurodiversity. 🧠📈 www.schmidtsciences.org/2026-polymat...schmidtsciences.org 101248
Reposted by Blake RichardsMcGill Research + Innovation @mcgill-research.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Congratulations to Prof. Blake Richards on winning the 2026 Schmidt Sciences Polymaths Award🎉 With the $2.5M prize, his team will build AI models that capture the uniqueness of individual minds, potentially advancing mental health care👏 🔗Read more: reporter.mcgill.ca/blake-richar... 10504
Reposted by Blake RichardsNicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I love this program. Some of my favorite people! Stephanie Palmer (U Chicago), @oritpeleg.bsky.social, and now @tyrellturing.bsky.social … no doubt many more. If you have received tenure w/in the last 3 years (++), get nominated. www.schmidtsciences.org/schmidt-scie...schmidtsciences.orgSchmidt Science Polymaths - Schmidt Sciences 061
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 22/09/2026My hot take: We were *already* in a state of being overwhelmed by reviewing grants, scholarships, and papers prior to generative AI. Now it's not even close to tenable. The time to start rethinking the entire peer review model in #academia was 10 years ago. Hopefully this will force it! 36210
Reposted by Blake Richardstbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 22/09/2026approximately one industry in our civilization has figured out "systematically keep track of things that go wrong, and then systematically try to prevent them from happening again", and this is the result 16655136
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Best essay of all time? Why am I asking, the answer is yes... 1556
Reposted by Blake RichardsAndrew D Wilson @adw.bsky.social · 22/09/2026For God so loved the world, that he gave his only decorative gourd article, that whosoever retweeteth him should not perish, but have everlasting decorative gourds, motherfucker 022
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Two tenure track positions are open in Computer Science @mcgill.ca ! Secure Software mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/McGill... Quantum Computing mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/McGill... Come join our department, and live in the coolest city in North America! (Yeah, I stand by that.)mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.comTenure-Track Faculty Position in Computer Science: Secure Software and Computer SystemsPlease refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ... 01811
Reposted by Blake RichardsAndrej Bicanski @andrejbicanski.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Now accepted and published --- with many thanks to the referees for helping sharpen the manuscript. Long time since the first notes. Good to see it officially out. www.cell.com/current-biol...cell.comA vector navigation and inference architecture can construct universal cognitive maps for abstract reasoningBicanski proposes an algorithm and neural mechanisms for the iterative construction of abstract cognitive maps via non-local inference. Map positions are triangulated and memorized by a set of extant ... 17332
Reposted by Blake RichardsWeberLab@McGill @weber-lab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026🚨We're hiring!!🚨 @biomcgill.bsky.social is looking for a Quantitative Cell Biologist to join our diverse and interdisciplinary community. Please share this ad broadly, and reach out if you have any questions. mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/McGill...mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.comAssistant Professor in Quantitative Cell Biology - Department of BiologyPlease refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ... 02724
Reposted by Blake RichardsMichael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026FAQ City: Montreal...really the best, no question Mascot: Non-existent, legless bird symbolizing endless toil What's for lunch: Onigiri place just opened on the ground floor...really turning a corner here People: Lots of super nice biologists, spanning outside kind to inside kind Vibes: see "City" 1145
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 21/09/2026New benchmark for neuro-foundation models work! Based on the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) this benchmark is ideal for exploring generalization across a variety of domains. If you're doing ML for neural data, you should check it out! #neuroscience #NeuroAI 🧪 0233
Reposted by Blake RichardsPhilip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026This is so neat - a thermodynamic computer (well, a very simple prototype) made from DNA. www.nature.com/articles/s41...nature.comA thermodynamically favoured molecular computer - NatureScaffolded DNA Computer performs diverse computations while thermodynamically relaxing towards equilibrium, demonstrating simplicity, reusability, speed, robustness and scalability of the approac... 24714
Reposted by Blake RichardsPatrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I've spent a lot of years studying a lot of collapses, and the truth of the matter is that they're always mundane: mild climatic shifts that reduce crop yields, a dumbass in power who makes some terrible decisions, neglecting things that obviously matter but the will to fix them can't be summoned. 302563610
Reposted by Blake RichardsLuke Sjulson @lukesjulson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I have no idea where this is from, but @philoneurosci.bsky.social posted it on our lab slack, and it was so good I had to share it 2233
Reposted by Blake RichardsMark Histed @markhisted.org · 18/09/2026I drafted a post earlier today saying this: That the rationalist longtemists are simply bad at math — bad at science, and doing scientism — and it comes from an overbelief in their own reasoning. Which is a lack of epistemic humility. 3578
Reposted by Blake RichardsRon Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 18/09/2026His dad definitely paid someone to take his SATs. 2468170303848
Reposted by Blake RichardsJibran Khokhar @drjkhokhar.bsky.social · 16/09/2026So grateful to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for the opportunity to talk about a paper that truly shaped how I think about my science by @fowleruci.bsky.social and @paulkennyphd.bsky.social! They helped make causal sense of the association that people call “Mr. Big“ in the context of 🚬! 13513
Reposted by Blake RichardsSimon Schultz @simonschultz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026New paper out in PLOS Comp Biology - collaboration with Simon Stringer and Dan Goodman Hierarchical feature binding in a spiking neural network model of the primate ventral visual pathway Brian Gardner et al journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...journals.plos.orgHierarchical feature binding in a spiking neural network model of the primate ventral visual pathwayAuthor summary How the brain pieces together visual details into coherent objects, known as the feature binding problem, remains an unresolved conceptual challenge in neuroscience. Existing theories e... 1214
Reposted by Blake RichardsAnil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 17/09/20261/ Conscious AI and Biological Naturalism. A long time in the making, but the full collection is *out now* in Behavioural and Brain Sciences I deeply thank all my many commentators for their wise, broad, and deep opinions on this critical topic.I also thank them for their saintly patience. 🙏🏽 37327
Reposted by Blake RichardsMark Wagner @mark-j-wagner.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Granule cells predict future dopamine reward. Delayed climbing-fiber signals can reinforce the action that precedes it. Our paper, led by Benjamin Filio, is out today in Nature Neuroscience. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Public PDF: rdcu.be/RscCNeXvkXAa 35812
Reposted by Blake RichardsRandy McIntosh @ar0mcintosh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...theguardian.comEuropean Union invites Canada to become first ever ‘associate member’Commission president says EU must ‘urgently reimagine our partnerships’ as she makes unprecedented offer 052
Reposted by Blake RichardsGlen Berseth @glenberseth.bsky.social · 15/09/2026In the 1960s, Minsky's lab had a robot arm using computer vision to see object geometry, plan a path, and assemble a set of parts. Foundational models today are still largely solving this same class of problem, just far cheaper and faster to set up. 172
Reposted by Blake RichardsGuillaume Lajoie @glajoie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026In brain-computer interfacing, clever and adaptive decoders help brains learn complex tasks faster. These can impact the nature of solutions learned by the brain. Our new paper is one of the first attempts to study this effect. W/ @neuroamyo.bsky.social and team www.nature.com/articles/s41...nature.comAssistive algorithms influence neural representations in motor brain-computer interfaces - Nature CommunicationsAssistive algorithms are widely used in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), but their effects on neural representations remain unclear. Here, the authors show that adaptive BCIs lead the brain to learn ... 14011
Reposted by Blake RichardsPatrick Mineault @patrickmineault.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Are virtual flies playing Beat Saber? SM64? Doom? No. The new fly connectome is an incredible achievement! Less is going on in the sim videos than it seems. I'm stoked to see people engage with neuroscience though. My breakdown: www.neuroai.science/p/are-flies-...neuroai.scienceAre flies playing Beat Saber?What a time to be alive! 27021
Reposted by Blake RichardsBlaise Agüera y Arcas @blaiseaguera.bsky.social · 14/09/2026A beautiful demonstration of symbiogenesis in action in the world of artificial life from one of our student researchers in Pi, @kjha02.bsky.social. Evolving agents on a shared memory tape, he and his co-authors show that when compute is a budgeted resource, cooperation emerges organically. 1233
Reposted by Blake RichardsSakana AI @sakanaai.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Introducing PC-ALM: a local-learning alternative to backprop that trains 1000-layer neural nets using only local dynamics. Blog: pub.sakana.ai/pc-alm/ 18714
Reposted by Blake RichardsBloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 14/09/2026Canada wants to see the creation of a global “technology stability” body to help oversee AI and ensure it is safe, Prime Minister Mark Carney saidbloom.bgCarney Calls for Global Tech Body to Strengthen AI GuardrailsCanada wants to see the creation of a global “technology stability” body to help oversee artificial intelligence and ensure it is safe, Prime Minister Mark Carney said. 65420
Reposted by Blake RichardsMichael Baym @baym.lol · 13/09/2026Ten years ago Tami, Roy, and I released a movie we made of antibiotic resistance evolving in real time. I thought maybe a couple thousand people tops would see it. I couldn't have imagined it would be seen millions of times, and be taught from middle school through the graduate level worldwide 23436127
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 14/09/2026This thread is good to read. In my experience, what @michaelhendricks.bsky.social is describing here is not the situation faced by all labs in Canada, but it does describe the situation faced by far too many. And, it's all down to one simple thing: the feds don't find the tri-councils enough! 3133
Reposted by Blake RichardsNancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 14/09/20261. Make sure you are registered 2. Pester friends to also check their registration 3. Donate to swingleft.org/funds 4. Attend No Kings Sat October 17. Plan is not necessarily to break records on crowd size, but to get people to VOTE EARLY! 5. Make noise!swingleft.org 112
Reposted by Blake RichardsNancy Kanwisher @nancykanwisher.bsky.social · 14/09/2026@timothysnyder.bsky.social: the midterm elections are "probably the most consequential since the 18th century... a victory of the opposition is a prerequisite for the maintenance of the rule of law and anything resembling political democracy.” So VOTE Early, encourage friends to do the same, and 1112
Reposted by Blake RichardsEliezyer de Oliveira @eliezyer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026After a long journey through review, our paper is finally out in Nature Communications. We started with a simple problem: The visual cortex is strongly modulated by movement. So how can it represent the visual world without movement interfering with everything? www.nature.com/articles/s41... 518139
Reposted by Blake RichardsAidan Horner @aidanhorner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026We're hiring! The York Neuroimaging Centre (YNiC) is looking for a Senior Technical Specialist to support & develop MRI. This is a new role to reflect our commitment to pushing forward MRI research at York. Come join the team! jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/seni... #neurojobs #neuroskyence #psychsciskyjobs.york.ac.ukJobs - The University of York 12428
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 11/09/2026A new artificial life paper from our Paradigms of Intelligence team, this one led by @kjha02.bsky.social. 🧬 It explores the co-evolution of cooperation and self-replication, with interesting implications for how shared energy budgets can shape these dynamics. 🧪 0243
Reposted by Blake RichardsP(aul) Frazee @pfrazee.com · 10/09/2026Demand DCs use renewable energy. Demand access to open weight models. Learn how to use AI effectively to do things you couldn't otherwise. Dont fire strays at friends 20555873
Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 10/09/2026This is a great idea, well-done @evansolomon.bsky.social ! #AI #Canada 020
Reposted by Blake RichardsNathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 10/09/2026If you are looking for an alternate viewpoint today, which assumes AI models accelerate the process of AI research, but it doesn't result in rapid RSI and an explosion of near term risks: www.interconnects.ai/p/lossy-self...interconnects.aiLossy self-improvementThe case for why self-improvement is real but it doesn't lead to fast takeoff. 37011
Reposted by Blake RichardsBen Hayden @benhayden.bsky.social · 09/09/2026New paper from the Neurosurgery Research Team at BCM! “Neural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gaze” led by @assiachericoni.bsky.social! 🧵 www.cell.com/neuron/abstr...cell.comNeural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gazeChericoni et al. show that neurons in the human hippocampus track the positions of multiple agents in a simple pursuit-based video game. They identified place codes for each agent and for gaze. The co... 19635
Reposted by Blake RichardsErin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 10/09/2026For decades, dreaming has been hypothesized to contribute to emotional memory processing. Here, we investigated how reactivating highly emotional autobiographical memories prior to sleep affects dream content and subsequent emotional appraisal of these memories. #sleeppeeps #psychscisky 🧠🟦academic.oup.comExperimentally Manipulating Dream Content by Reactivating a Remote Emotional MemoryThis research demonstrates that reactivating remote emotional memories before sleep influences subsequent dream emotions. Notably, we found no evidence tha 1339
Reposted by Blake RichardsEarl K. Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Neural activity is often summarized as a small number of shared patterns (low-dimensional structure). sliceTCA offers a more complete and efficient way to uncover meaningful structure in large-scale brain recordings. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #neurosciencenature.comDimensionality reduction beyond neural subspaces with slice tensor component analysis - Nature NeuroscienceNeural activity does not always lie in a low-dimensional subspace. The authors extend this classic view to show that task-relevant information is distributed across multiple covariability classes and ... 1427
Reposted by Blake RichardsRavi Menon @northernthrux.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Fabulous story on @sjo09.bsky.social on turning science fiction into science fact. braincanada.ca/about/news-u...braincanada.caAre Lost Memories Really Gone?Neuroscientist Sheena Josselyn's research suggests some memories lost to Alzheimer's aren't gone — just hard to access. Learn what her work means for patients and families. 1125
Reposted by Blake RichardsAndrew Weinstein @andrewjweinstein.com · 09/09/2026You know who actually did show up at Ground Zero? Canadian emergency rescue crews. 391309747712
Reposted by Blake RichardsMark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Canada strong is not just about withstanding a crisis. It’s about coming out of it stronger. Watch the new edition of Forward Guidance: youtu.be/eYAwioM3RQI 39685150
Reposted by Blake Richardslastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 09/09/2026My impression is this is pretty typical, and its another thing that persuades me that... to be honest... The Cosmopolitan Way Of Life is simply superior. The people throwing the authoritarian temper tantrum are simply those ignorant of its benefits. 311147196
Reposted by Blake RichardsKonrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Cool cool. Let’s not obsess about dimensionality. Good motto in a 1/f world! 1304