Sparks 👁️

I have long been a subscriber to the idea that any intelligence needs to be embodied and situated. The very first problems a baby has to solve are, How do I move my body? How do I move around in the world? Those tasks are entirely missing from existing large language models. And, as many people noted, the phrase “large language model” is a misnomer... See more

Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude—it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend or a vacation. It is, in the first place, an attitude of mind, a condition of the soul, and as such utterly contrary to the ideal of “worker” in each and ever... See more

I like to use that word now, soul . I prefer using soul to mind , not that they’re the same concept at all. “Mind” automatically seems to evoke “versus body” in the minds of everyone, including myself, no matter how hard we try, no matter how many times we’ve noticed that the brain is an organ of the body and that the human mind emerges from the br... See more

That is, we’ve traded our craftsmenship for management. We now are less immersed in the exact pieces we’re putting together and more interested in the outcome of the work. To us, programming has now become a means to an end, instead of an end in itself.

Why are we seeing a global homogenizing of culture across every dimension that counts? Why has Hollywood become so creatively bankrupt that nobody bothers watching that oh-so-predictable-52nd sequel to a superhero movie? Why have pop songs become so objectively similar? Why is everyone following the same formula for their posts on Instagram and hum... See more

I’ve come to learn that I never want to sacrifice the aliveness of the present moment in service of a fantasy.

Instead of a measurable, quantifiable thing that exists independently out in the world, we suggest that intelligence is a label, pinned by humanity onto a bag stuffed with a jumble of independent traits that helped our ancestors thrive.