axel cleeremans

axel cleeremans

@axc.bsky.social

Brain, minds, & consciousness. Also interested in design, visual arts, biology, space, typography, and anticipation. Also known as « Axel from Belgium »

2.9K followers1.3K following123 posts

axel cleeremans reposted

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

axel cleeremans reposted

I’ve now lived so much longer than I would ever have expected to that I feel I’m living in the future. This is when I imagined Neuromancer happening. And now the creators of today’s AI warn us that it threatens humanity.

axel cleeremans reposted

I used to love this time of year, hearing from students applying to work in my lab. No more. Every day a fresh batch of nearly identical emails with nonsensical remixes of the text on my lab website. It makes me so sad.

axel cleeremans reposted

🚨 You can still sign 🖊️ the open letter! If you do, don't forget to confirm the email, otherwise your name won't show up. All signatures help

Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social

"The goal of academic training is not to solve problems as efficiently and quickly as possible, but to develop skills for identifying and dealing with novel problems, which have never been solved before." openletter.earth/open-letter-... @olivia.science

Hunting for old programs of conferences of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness I stumble upon the 1984 french translation of Krutch’s 1981 book about AI on small computers. I learned a lot of things going through that book!

axel cleeremans reposted

axel cleeremans reposted

I get angry when people talk about "declining trust in science" as though there weren't a coordinated effort by billionaire criminals to smear science as a way to decrease regulations, spread propaganda, and enrich themselves. Scientists are being scapegoated and we should not play along.

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axel cleeremans reposted

We are really happy to be able to share a lot of our team work in #ASSC29! 4 talks and 2 posters... details below! 1. Starting tomorrow (1/07) with @leamoncoucy.bsky.social during the CONCURRENT SESSION 4, (14h-15h), a talk on the "Dimensions of the phenomenal space and dynamics of its structure" ⬇️

axel cleeremans@axc.bsky.social

assc26.bsky.social #ASSC29

axel cleeremans reposted

Absolutely honoured and excited to join the first-ever AI Sentience Scholars! ❤️ Thank you @neuromatch.bsky.social! 😍Looking forward to working with @axc.bsky.social on reinforcement learning and subjective experience of pleasure! #neuroAI #aisentience

Neuromatch@neuromatch.bsky.social

🎉 Introducing the 2026 Neuromatch AI Sentience Scholars cohort! Learn more about them, the projects they will be working on, and their mentors! ⬇️ neuromatch.io/ai-sentience... We're just kicking off this 6 month program and already incredibly proud! #AISentience #AIResearch #ConsciousnessStudies

axel cleeremans reposted

1/ New paper out today in Frontiers in Psychology 🧠 "Beyond the reducing valve: a computational neurophenomenology of altered states via deep neural networks" A unified framework for hallucinations, psychedelic experience & ego dissolution 🧵 doi.org/10.3389/fpsy...

doi.orgFrontiers | Beyond the reducing valve: towards a computational neurophenomenology of altered states via deep neural networksAltered states of consciousness, including hallucinations, psychedelic experiences, and ego dissolution, differ qualitatively, yet no unified computational f...

axel cleeremans reposted

Reasons recorded for worker absence on this 3,250 year-old ancient Egyptian attendance register include ‘brewing beer’🍺 ‘stung by a scorpion’ 🦂 and ‘embalming brother’! 🤯 From Deir el-Medina, royal tomb worker’s village 📷 by me #Archaeology

en.wikipedia.orgTermination Shock (novel) - Wikipedia
Phil PlAIt@philplait.bsky.social

This may be anti-hot take, but dumping billion of tons of particles into the atmosphere to block the sun is maybe a bad idea, which is why I'm very worried some billionaire will want to do it. Words by me. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/dimming-th... 🧪

axel cleeremans reposted

An amazing opportunity - I am proposing a project dedicated to the thorny question of synthetic pleasure, but I am competing with stellar colleagues with equally fascinating topics!

Neuromatch@neuromatch.bsky.social

🧠🤖 Explore the frontier of AI, consciousness, and society. Applications for the AI Sentience Scholars program are now open! ➡️ Learn more and review the application: neuromatch.io/ai-sentience... ➡️ Register for the webinar here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... #AIResearch EthicsInAI #AISETS

axel cleeremans reposted

I really enjoyed the #COSYNE2026 (comp neuro) meeting - amazing talks and fantastic poster sessions! 👏 Still surprised how little mention there was of either evolution or development, though. It's worth keeping in mind that things are the way they are because they got that way! 😉

axel cleeremans reposted

check out the faculty supervising *funded fellowship projects*! (yes, me included!) you won't want to miss this opportunity folks. seriously, it will be fabulous.

Neuromatch@neuromatch.bsky.social

🧠🤖 Explore the frontier of AI, consciousness, and society. Applications for the AI Sentience Scholars program are now open! ➡️ Learn more and review the application: neuromatch.io/ai-sentience... ➡️ Register for the webinar here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... #AIResearch EthicsInAI #AISETS

axel cleeremans reposted

🎉The XP team is so glad to present a symposium at #ESCAN2026 in Roma on the need to consider affect to understand the function of consciousness! Inès Mentec and Gabriel Brandolini will be joined by @ashenhav.bsky.social and Benedetto De Martino. 😁See you there!😁https://escan2026.eu/

escan2026.euHome - ESCAN 2026ESCAN 2026 is the 9th ESCAN Conference, the biennial meeting of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Very happy to see this come out 😃

🚨 New article in #NCONSC Exploring the role of micro-valence in the phenomenal space: insights from similarity judgments and deep learning models academic.oup.com/nc/article/2... @axc.bsky.social #consciousness 🧠🧪

axel cleeremans reposted

✨What is the relationship between aesthetic preferences and consciousness?✨ We are so very excited to welcome Richard Prum to discuss this question with us in Brussels. Do not miss this event! 📅 18 of March, 2026 🕒 16h-18h 📍 Brussels, ULB campus Solbosch, Solvay

axel cleeremans reposted

Out in PNAS: Repetitions trigger illusory awareness in implicit statistical learning www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We find that the presence of repetitions in sequences that follow a hidden, complex regularity makes participants think they consciously figured out the real regularity... 1/n

pnas.orgPNASProceedings 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...

« [AI systems] delegitimize knowledge, inhibit cognitive development, short-circuit decision making processes, and isolate humans by displacing or degrading human connection. »

Luiza Jarovsky, PhD@luizajarovsky.bsky.social

🚨 Last week, I sat with Profs. @hartzog.bsky.social and @jessicasilbey.bsky.social to discuss their excellent new paper, "How AI Destroys Institutions." The paper has been downloaded 30,000+ times, and it discusses some of AI's most important negative consequences. Watch our conversation below:

axel cleeremans reposted

I laughed out loud when I saw “AI use statement The author used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 for research purposes and for editorial feedback after the drafting process.” #neuroskyence

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social

We have little direct evidence about what happens when working scientists—not students, not white-collar professionals doing routine tasks—offload the cognitive labor of scientific writing to AI, writes Tim Requarth. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...

Consider this: You ask chatGPT to compose the eulogy for a deceased friend. After you speak at the funeral, someone tells you how moved she was. Do you reveal chatGPT wrote the speech? If you don’t, you are cheating. But if you do, the words lose their meaning and you are a fraud. What would you do?