Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish • OI describes an emerging multidisciplinary field working to develop biological computing using 3D cultures of human brain cells (brain organoids) and brain-machine interface technologies. • (Frontiers in Science, Lena Smirnova, et al.) / February 27

Scientists are now teaching AI how to read human minds • Researchers at Osaka University in Japan have found that AI can be trained to reconstruct high resolution images from human brain activity, gathered from MRI scans, which bear a striking resemblance to the source image being shown to the participants. • (Newsweek, Pandora Dewan) / March 10

The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble • AI has all the hallmarks of a classic pump-and-dump, starting with terminology. AI isn’t “artificial” and it’s not “intelligent.” “Machine learning” doesn’t learn. On this week’s Trashfuture podcast, they made an excellent (and profane and hilarious) case that ChatGPT is best understood as a sophisticated form of autocomplete – not our new robot overlord. • (Pluralistic, Cory Doctorow) / March 9

The False Promise of Chomskyism • I submit that, like the Jesuit astronomers declining to look through Galileo’s telescope, what Chomsky and his followers are ultimately angry at is reality itself, for having the temerity to offer something up that they didn’t predict and that doesn’t fit their worldview. • (Shtetl-Optimized, Scott Aaronson) / March 9

The False Promise of ChatGPT • ChatGPT and its brethren are constitutionally unable to balance creativity with constraint. They either overgenerate or undergenerate. Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity. • (The New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts, Jeffrey Watumull) / March 8

ChatGPT invented its own puzzle game • Sumplete, a number completion game, was invented, coded and even named entirely by ChatGPT • (Puzzled’s Substack, Puzzled Penguin) / March 6

Google Search Is Dying • People are searching Reddit due to increasing bot-generated, SEO-optimized web content and Google’s AI algorithm that no longer gives the results for what you typed in, but tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant” • (DKB Blog, Dmitri Brereton) / February 14