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#machine learning

ideas updated

AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer, because they are simulation machines.

I can dismiss a lot of pronouncements by Big Tech companies as simply press releases trying to invent the future. But attempting to ascribe consciousness to AI models pisses me off, particularly as the untold riches being poured into AI development could be used to lessen the suffering of real people and animals that we know for sure experience it.

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notes updated

The arbuscular mycorrhizal network is literally cool

I knew mitochondrial networks were interesting, but this is next level.

Using machine learning models, [scientists have] estimated that worldwide, the arbuscular mycorrhizal network stretches for 110 quadrillion kilometers, almost a billion times the distance from Earth to the sun. (Scoop up just a teaspoon of soil and you might find 10 meters of fungal strands.) Every year, these fungi shuttle around 4 billion metric tons of carbon, equal to 11 percent of humanity’s CO2 emissions.

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