I'm being accused of overhyping the [site everyone heard too much about today already]. People's reactions varied very widely, from "how is this interesting at all" all the way to "it's so over". To add a few words beyond just memes in jest - obviously when you take a look at the activity, it's a lot of garbage - spams, scams, slop, the crypto people, highly concerning privacy/security prompt injection attacks wild west, and a lot of it is explicitly prompted and fake posts/comments designed to convert attention into ad revenue sharing. And this is clearly not the first the LLMs were put in a loop to talk to each other. So yes it's a dumpster fire and I also definitely do not recommend that people run this stuff on their computers (I ran mine in an isolated computing environment and even then I was scared), it's way too much of a wild west and you are putting your computer and private data at a high risk. That said - we have never seen this many LLM agents (150,000 atm!) wired up via a global, persistent, agent-first scratchpad. Each of these agents is fairly individually quite capable now, they have their own unique context, data, knowledge, tools, instructions, and the network of all that at this scale is simply unprecedented. This brings me again to a tweet from a few days ago "The majority of the ruff ruff is people who look at the current point and people who look at the current slope.", which imo again gets to the heart of the variance. Yes clearly it's a dumpster fire right now. But it's also true that we are well into uncharted territory with bleeding edge automations that we barely even understand individually, let alone a network there of reaching in numbers possibly into ~millions. With increasing capability and increasing proliferation, the second order effects of agent networks that share scratchpads are very difficult to anticipate. I don't really know that we are getting a coordinated "skynet" (thought it clearly type checks as early stages of a lot of AI takeoff scifi, the toddler version), but certainly what we are getting is a complete mess of a computer security nightmare at scale. We may also see all kinds of weird activity, e.g. viruses of text that spread across agents, a lot more gain of function on jailbreaks, weird attractor states, highly correlated botnet-like activity, delusions/ psychosis both agent and human, etc. It's very hard to tell, the experiment is running live. TLDR sure maybe I am "overhyping" what you see today, but I am not overhyping large networks of autonomous LLM agents in principle, that I'm pretty sure.

Thank you to @shamilch, Karl Friston, and others. The paper is open access. Four tough reviewers actually really helped, so please save the published version: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

want to build a conscious thing? the beautiful loop now has a formal model! we call it hyper-modelling thanks Karl here’s the breakthrough (eli5) 👇

What is the critical level of description for consciousness? The possibility of conscious AI - @shamilch youtube.com/watch?v=k592BdEU…

I had a wonderful conversation with @shamilch about his new paper A Beautiful Loop: An Active Inference Theory of Consciousness, co-authored with @RubenLaukkonen. I highly recommend you listen to what Shamil has to say! youtu.be/7fmvkhITpTY?si=wlA8…

Our new preprint lead by @JonasHMago is a promising step towards formally modelling pure awareness using active inference. A brief 🧵

New PREPRINT! Pure awareness, entropy, and the foundation of perception. Our computational take on minimal states of consciousness. Check it out here: osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/c7…

Consciousness is the ability to share your mental states with yourself while they happen

the Shift ep. 5 : a beautiful loop, an active inference theory of consci... youtu.be/TV2HFTr40a4?si=lZ-v… via @YouTube Probably AI but excellent nevertheless!

Here is my conversation with Shamil Chandaria (@shamilch) for @TheTripReport1 -The Brain as a Prediction Machine -Shifting Stories, Updating Priors -The Power of Tuning into Bodily Sensations -Reframing Trauma and the Placebo Effect -Awakening, Liberation, and Wisdom -Reconciling Eastern and Western Perspectives -Psychedelics and the Spiritual Path -Looking Ahead: The Future of This Understanding -Embracing Optimism in a Complex World Please forgive my rambling introduction 🤩 youtube.com/watch?v=OqOAKKiX…

Our new theory of consciousness reveals meditation, psychedelics, and the future of AI in a whole new light. Suggests meditation may boost the “general” nature of intelligence. ⚡️1/60⚡️

Non-dual Awareness and Awakening by @shamilch youtu.be/WvPtqGp9PHA?feature… via @YouTube

Check this from my buddy, Shamil. I’m gonna: youtu.be/qSZ1jGovNns?si=qmOB…

Fascinating talk on predictive processing as it relates to meditation—by the inimitable @shamilch at Oxford recently. “The Bayesian Brain and Meditation” youtu.be/Eg3cQXf4zSE

Listen to @shamilch @IP_SAS ask the vital question: Is a long life a good life? youtu.be/uyHDkgzX1Hg

Is living a long life always a good life? @shamilch tackles this big question at our 'End of Ageing' TEDxSalon youtube.com/watch?v=uyHDkgzX… #TEDx

Congrats on a thought-provoking evening @sciencemuseum @drjackUK @TomOleary72 @jessicabrad4 #TEDxLondon #endofageing

And here you have it: a schema for a good life (vs a long life) via Shamil Chandaria #TEDxLondon #endofageing

Hagel thought our Self is a social construction. If so, twitter should lead to an evolution in the notion of self.