Peter Howitt

Peter Howitt

@peterhowitt.bsky.social

AI optimist (Iain M Banks / James Lovelock variety). Full time lawyer, part-time poet and fumbling philosopher - "That is not what I meant, at all.” https://compossible.blog/

3.3K followers7.9K following5.8K posts

Peter Howitt reposted

Mike Elk
@mikeelk.bsky.social

WATCH: Yesterday, Lula won a stunning comeback victory to defeat Flavio Bolsonaro. Brazilians took to the streets to celebrate, their parties reflecting the joy of the mobilizations that propelled his win! All over Brasil last night, you heard people singing “Ole ole olaaaa, Lulaaaaa, Luuula".

Peter Howitt reposted

Joel S.
@joelhs.bsky.social

Israel’s Foreign Ministry attacking Brad Lander - a self-described liberal Zionist - by name, simply for doing protective presence, should be the final sign that the Israeli government would gladly sacrifice every last Jew in Diaspora to dominate more Palestinians with impunity.

Peter Howitt
@peterhowitt.bsky.social

Without a testable basis for consciousness, it's all assumption. Confident assumptions about who can feel pain, e.g. newborns, animals, black people have been wrong. The question isn't whether AI is conscious. It's that we have no objective test & until we do functional equivalence is the best avail

Anil Seth@anilseth.bsky.social

1/2 Three reasons why AI is not conscious - and perhaps never will be. New in @nature.com with Ned Block @neddo.bsky.social and Giulio Tononi www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.comThree reasons why AI is not conscious and perhaps never will beLarge language models can mimic thought and feeling with uncanny skill. But evidence from neuroscience suggests that intelligence alone is not enough for subjective experience.

Peter Howitt reposted

Brad Lander
@bradlander.bsky.social

I’ve been released from IDF custody with a “warning,” apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee). But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention.

Peter Howitt reposted

mr. TIM
@timkellogg.me

Replying to @timkellogg.me

i personally have been loving DSH, it’s so incredibly extensible that you can replace even the agent loop or sandbox without forking also, i’m starting to get sold on web UI for coding agents bsky.app/profile/timk...

mr. TIM@timkellogg.me

DeepSeek Harness v0.1 the idea is everything is a plugin — models, tools, sessions, skills, sandboxes, loops, … github.com/deepseek-ai/...

github.comGitHub - deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness: DeepSeek Harness: Everything is a Plugin.DeepSeek Harness: Everything is a Plugin. Contribute to deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness development by creating an account on GitHub.

Peter Howitt reposted

Hetan Shah
@hetanshah.bsky.social

Remember OpenAI published all those maths ‘proofs’? Turns out (at least) one of them is pretty ground breaking - the proof of the quasi-Riemann hypothesis. It’s being discussed in the maths community but not much wider cut through yet. Here’s a write up www.quantamagazine.org/ai-proved-th...

quantamagazine.orgAI Proved the Quasi-Riemann Hypothesis. What Happens Now? | Quanta MagazineUnlike other recent AI proofs, this one has been unpacked by human experts. The implications, one mathematician said, are “staggering.”

Peter Howitt reposted

Brad Lander
@bradlander.bsky.social

I'm in the West Bank this week as part of the “Protect the Harvest” coalition along with Israelis for Peace, Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine & Protect the Harvest.

Peter Howitt
@peterhowitt.bsky.social

European companies face “devastating” retaliation from Washington if Brussels presses ahead with plans to restrict American rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX from parts of the European market, the US ambassador to the EU has warned.

techdigest.tvUS threatens European firms over Starlink restrictions, Anthropic to commit 5% of shares to “public good” - Tech DigestEuropean companies face retaliation from US if Brussels presses ahead with plans to restrict American rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX

Peter Howitt reposted

Anne Applebaum
@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu

The president of Brazil has won a court case against Meta, after accusing them of restricting his posts and algorithmically favoring his opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro www.nbcnews.com/world/south-...

nbcnews.comBrazil’s Lula wins electoral court challenge against Meta for alleged pro-Bolsonaro algorithm biasA judge ruled that the tech company must adopt measures to immediately secure equal treatment of the two presidential candidates ahead of an Oct. 25 runoff.

Peter Howitt reposted

Peter Jukes
@peterjukes.bsky.social

So Trump not only disarmed Ukraine by removing the Starlink/Starshield capability with defensive drones (the system only operates in Ukraine), he blinded it too with withholding advanced warnings of Russian missile attacks. How evil, cowardly and craven. Is Kash Patel still in Moscow

Peter Howitt
@peterhowitt.bsky.social

Fascinating - I had just finished including something similar for Book 2 of After Intelligence when I read this: Anthropic's team demonstrated that smaller models (around 9B to 30B parameters) can independently figure out how to set up and run inference software on low-security consumer hardware.

anthropic.comAI models may be capable of self-replicating without access to a datacenterSmall AI models may be only months away from being able to self-replicate across cheap IoT devices like Android TV boxes, with no datacenter needed.
Peter Howitt
@peterhowitt.bsky.social

Distributed Weight-Based Replicators: They successfully split a model across multiple cheap consumer devices to run a distributed inference setup, proving that an AI could theoretically use fragmented consumer internet-of-things (IoT) devices as its host rather than high-end servers.

Peter Howitt
@peterhowitt.bsky.social

You received a gift article from Haaretz 'Even the Lowest-Ranking Target Justified Civilian Casualties': Israeli Intelligence Soldiers Detail Gaza Policy Shift www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

haaretz.comIDF testimonies: After Oct. 7, even lowest-level target justified civilian deathIntelligence and drone personnel describe loosened targeting rules, strikes approved despite the risk of hundreds of civilian casualties, and orders not to question their missions. The IDF disputes th...
Voice4Justice@voices4justice.bsky.social

💥💥💥 Even a low-ranking target justified harm to civilians: Intelligence soldiers describe changes in the rules of engagement during the war. Intelligence soldiers and drone operators revealed in interviews with Haaretz how the IDF’s rules of engagement changed after October 7, ⚠️🏴‍☠️🧵