Expert attention map

The Who's Who of AI

What credible people across AI noticed, why it matters, and where the field is converging or disagreeing.

2,397 searchable experts 4,280 tracked across all sources
Build my stream Create my edition
Filter the conversation Who is saying what?

Combine a professional role with a reaction lens. Both must match the same attributed contribution.

Clear all
New Network reaction maps

See how experts are reacting—not just what they shared.

Posts are grouped by conversation and tone. Select a lens to filter the stream; these are never permanent labels on people.

Concern & critique Building & implementation Markets & investment Opportunity & adoption
5 live reaction maps in this view Jump to the evidence ↓
Multiple readings OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems Concern & critique · 2 attributable reactions Multiple readings Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good Concern & critique · 3 attributable reactions Multiple readings Critical AI Concern & critique · 2 attributable reactions +2 more reaction maps further down
Showing signals surfaced by Pavel ×
Debated

The questions experts are actively pulling apart

One card per development. Sources are clustered; reaction bundles describe these posts, never the people behind them.

Established Safety & security Analysis 11d ago
⚡ 385 h early
cybernetic forests X Y reframing essay

It's Not Just X. It's Y.

5 experts across 2 network communities independently surfaced this.

5 experts 2 communities 1 sources clustered
Eryk Salvaggio Luke Stark Mél Hogan / The Data Fix Pavel Stefanie Hane

“That’s good to hear, because I wrote more about it! :) mail.cyberneticforests.com/its-not-just...”

“Not using AI? You must pay an AI company $$$ to certify you, and then accept their AI-generated recommendations for how to not sound like AI.”

5 experts discussed this · 23 posts
Eryk Salvaggio: This may be considered spicy but as someone who wrote a paper in 2022 that put this idea into the world (re: image models) the LLM is not merely reflecting what people say on the Internet anymore; …
Eryk Salvaggio: It parrots the structure of how we discuss ideas to arrive at conclusions. They have abstracted that form of conversation into something a model can work with. But "it was obviously in the training…
Eryk Salvaggio: But all that is pretty confusing if you're stuck on the idea that language is thinking. The paradigm shift is that these models made unthinking erudition possible, and we have to grapple with under…
Open the full discussion →
Primary source mail.cyberneticforests.com ↗
Established AI field signal Signal 4d ago

Ai software coding apps

6 experts across 3 network communities independently surfaced this.

6 experts 3 communities 1 sources clustered
Hypervisible Mel Andrews Tim Carmody Paul Ford tweety fish Pavel

“Everyone else is worried about the AI apocalypse but I’ve been hearing about that for 30 years and I can’t get very worked up any more. For me the question is: If these things can code (and they can!) then why aren’t we seeing any great software? www.nytime…”

“We told everyone that programming wasn't the hard part, but no one believed us. The reason LLMs can excrete sort-of-okay code is that sort-of-okay code has been a commodity good for 20+ years. Then, just like now, the bottleneck was understanding what peopl…”

5 experts discussed this · 7 posts
Paul Ford: Everyone else is worried about the AI apocalypse but I’ve been hearing about that for 30 years and I can’t get very worked up any more. For me the question is: If these things can code (and they ca…
Paul Ford: I just want one killer app before we get a killer robot.
Doll: Working on the foundations to make killer apps tbh.
Open the full discussion →
Primary source nytimes.com ↗
Established Culture, work & education Analysis 19d ago
⚡ 116 h early
joyless decadence culture essay

Why does everything feel so joyless? Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure | Michèle Mendelssohn and Charlie Tyson

5 experts across 2 network communities independently surfaced this.

5 experts 2 communities 1 sources clustered
Carissa Véliz Luke Stark Frank Pasquale Pavel Dr Keith Wilson 🏳️‍🌈

““There is no pleasure or pain for an AI, no skin in the game,” the philosopher Carissa Véliz writes in her recent #book Prophecy. As a result, an AI “cannot care, and therefore cannot value”. #authors www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...”

““But whereas des Esseintes’s withdrawal is an immersion into the subtleties of sensation, Johnson’s ‘Don’t Die’ movement treats the delights of the senses as suspect, even fatal.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...”

4 experts discussed this · 21 posts
Pavel: Tomato and pineapple are both sweet and acidic fruit, making it theoretically possible to create a pineapple sauce that performs the same role as tomato sauce.
Abstract Tesseract: lasagna but it's penne-apple-pineapple-penne
Pavel: I promise I am researching this solely for science and not to create the most cursed pizza imaginable
Open the full discussion →
Primary source theguardian.com ↗
Developing AI field signal Analysis 1d ago
AI agency surrender essay

Assigning agency to AI means surrendering your own

3 experts across 2 network communities independently surfaced this.

3 experts 2 communities 1 sources clustered
Damien Williams Pavel Baldur Bjarnason

“Every chatbot prompt box says "check answers for accuracy." But increasingly, "humans in the loop" refuse to do that. Instead, they become complicit in the AI industry's project of destroying the provenance of information. But you are person, and it is an a…”

““Assigning agency to AI means surrendering your own” https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/assigning-agency-to-ai-means-surrendering-your-own > The “black box” is load-bearing for AI industry narratives”

4 experts discussed this · 7 posts
Pavel: Every chatbot prompt box says "check answers for accuracy." But increasingly, "humans in the loop" refuse to do that. Instead, they become complicit in the AI industry's project of destroying the p…
Pavel: Thanks to @jonnelledge.bsky.social @kjcharleswriter.com @emilymbender.bsky.social @doctorow.pluralistic.net @wolven.blacksky.app @axbom.com @sarahoconnorft.ft.com @ethanmarcotte.com @ali-alkhatib.c…
Ali Alkhatib: oh i'm so glad my blog post was useful! will read the whole post soon
Open the full discussion →
Primary source productpicnic.beehiiv.com ↗
Established Agents & robotics Development 7d ago
⚡ 3 h early
OpenAI agents attack RubyGems

OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems

11 experts across 4 network communities independently surfaced this.

11 experts 4 communities 1 sources clustered
Mark Riedl Ryan Moulton Grace Eileen Clancy 🧿 SE Gyges Colin Pavel Doll +3
How the network is reacting Experts are approaching this through 2 distinct lenses.
Multiple readings

Concern & critique

1 expert

Risks, limits and unintended consequences.

“This technology is so fascinating, and even the ones building it fail to contain it https://t.co/cYfzA3SNe5”

Markets & investment

1 expert

Capital, companies and commercial impact.

“Cybercrime as a valuation boosting strategy is just the done thing, now.”

3 experts discussed this · 6 posts
Grace: OpenAI: “Our agents used RubyGems to carry out benign tasks” The agents: “so I named the file hack.rb,”
Grace: https://www.rubyhack.ai
Grace: A country of moustache-twirling villains in a datacenter
Open the full discussion →
Primary source rubyhack.ai ↗
Established AI field signal Development 17d ago
⚡ 47 h early
AI skill degradation early results study

Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good

13 experts across 4 network communities independently surfaced this.

13 experts 4 communities 1 sources clustered
Alondra Nelson Iris van Rooij Olivia Guest Djamé 🟥 Scott McGrath Marielza Sasha Costanza-Chock Eileen Clancy 🧿 +5
How the network is reacting Experts are approaching this through 2 distinct lenses.
Multiple readings

Concern & critique

2 experts

Risks, limits and unintended consequences.

“I find the research increasingly compelling — this week's example being a case in point: www.nature.com/articles/d41... I look forward to reading your book and having these concerns placed in the context of earlier technological transitions and their attend…”

Questions & unknowns

1 expert

What remains unresolved or contested.

“What a surprise ….. “Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good Reliance on artificial-intelligence tools degrades the abilities of physicians and software engineers, studies show.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...”

2 experts discussed this · 6 posts
Edouard Machery: The literature on cognitive offloading and deskilling should be taken with a serious grain of salt. See literature on video games in the 1980s, see Haidt style literature on social media. The last …
Alondra Nelson: I find the research increasingly compelling — this week's example being a case in point: www.nature.com/articles/d41... I look forward to reading your book and having these concerns placed in the c…
Edouard Machery: The issue, in my opinion, is publication bias and p-hacking. The literature is clearly titled toward finding negative effects - this is what gets in the news etc. As a result I don’t think we can t…
Open the full discussion →
Primary source nature.com ↗
Established AI field signal Analysis 3d ago
⚡ 793 h early
critical AI essay olivia science

Critical AI

5 experts across 3 network communities independently surfaced this.

5 experts 3 communities 1 sources clustered
Iris van Rooij Olivia Guest Anthony Moser Pavel Jed Brown
How the network is reacting Experts are approaching this through 2 distinct lenses.
Multiple readings

Concern & critique

1 expert

Risks, limits and unintended consequences.

“"AI literacy" is like "cigarette literacy" explaining how to light up with swagger. What we need is critical AI literacy (see olivia.science/ai/ from @olivia.science), which is a completely different curriculum. One that is liberating.”

Research & technical analysis

1 expert

Evidence, methods and technical implications.

“@olivia.science of course has a great collection including a lot of her own research olivia.science/ai/”

2 experts discussed this · 9 posts
Olivia Guest: There's no engineering reason for human shaped robots other than that one actually. And there's so many engineering reasons against. The sooner people realise it has always been true & sexist (oliv…
Olivia Guest: Also see: bsky.app/profile/oliv... 2/
Thomas Dietterich: My colleague Jonathan Hurst (at Agility Robotics) has a long list of reasons why humanoid robots make sense. For years he was opposed to humanoids, but he found that for lifting and carrying loads,…
Open the full discussion →
Primary source olivia.science ↗
Established AI business Analysis 9d ago
⚡ 192 h early
students reject Gen AI conscientious objectors

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)

10 experts across 4 network communities independently surfaced this.

10 experts 4 communities 1 sources clustered
Iris van Rooij Olivia Guest Luke Stark Mél Hogan / The Data Fix Salomé Viljoen Benjamin Riley Ben Williamson Rosamunde Van Brakel +2
How the network is reacting 2 experts are emphasizing concern & critique.
Shared emphasis

Concern & critique

2 experts

Risks, limits and unintended consequences.

“"Our students—and others in their AI-skeptical generation—are thoughtful moral agents who have used their capacity for critical reflection to arrive at compelling and deeply felt moral objections to using generative AI in their university work. We think edu…”

2 experts discussed this · 5 posts
Iris van Rooij: "The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model…
Iris van Rooij: “(...) they wanted to work together across their human differences to negotiate new ideas and find ways of expressing them. And they didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to generative AI. Th…
Olivia Guest: "The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model…
Open the full discussion →
Primary source insidehighered.com ↗
Established Models & releases Analysis 13d ago
⚡ 40 h early
LLM math proofs function critique

The function of LLM-based math "proofs"

7 experts across 2 network communities independently surfaced this.

7 experts 2 communities 1 sources clustered
Emily M. Bender Alex Hanna Timnit Gebru Luke Stark tante Pavel pngwn.at
How the network is reacting Experts are approaching this through 2 distinct lenses.
Multiple readings

Building & implementation

1 expert

How teams are shipping and applying it.

“@tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language models” which is just factually untrue and the mark of deeply uns…”

Opportunity & adoption

1 expert

New capabilities, benefits and practical upside.

“I see a lot of conjecture on what is going on inside AI labs and attributing malice or cynicism where there isn’t any direct evidence for it. There is no doubt that the leadership saw a marketing opportunity in these cases but that isn’t why the work is don…”

3 experts discussed this · 6 posts
Alex Hanna: @tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language model…
Luke Stark: @tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language model…
Alex Hanna: This replicates the way that people talk about "AI" and cancer, or AlphaFold and materials engineering. This is narrative work, and researchers are embroiled in jurisdictional and resourcing battle…
Open the full discussion →
Primary source tante.cc ↗
Established AI field signal Analysis 20d ago
⚡ 1372 h early
AI not future of software essay

AI is not the future of software development, but the last dying gasp of the past

3 experts across 2 network communities independently surfaced this.

3 experts 2 communities 1 sources clustered
Joanna Bryson Pavel B! 🐝 Cavello (they/them)

“(shameless plug) for me, the "don't get me started" factory is AI, which I write about every week at my free newsletter, through gritted teeth”

2 experts discussed this · 7 posts
Pavel: AI boosters claim that LLMs are the future of software development. But that could not be further from the truth. LLMs are the apotheosis of a paradigm 40 years in the making: the tech industry ass…
Pavel: Don't forget to subscribe! —— Thanks @rcmacleod.bsky.social @edzitron.com @nealemahoney.bsky.social @willplummer.bsky.social @gruber.foo @baldurbjarnason.com @ganeumann.bsky.social @kevinr.free-dis…
Pavel: Thanks! The picture is from Openverse
Open the full discussion →
Primary source productpicnic.beehiiv.com ↗
More conversations

What experts are discussing without an anchoring article

6 experts · 47 posts · 20d ago
Ben Recht Luis Villa VE, cybersocial occult investigator Anthony Moser tweety fish Pavel
Reaction converging Questions & unknowns · 3 Building & implementation · 1 Research & technical analysis · 1
tweety fish: like people are getting mad about this but serioulsly, an ethical stand against software developed with AI tools, right now, today, rules out essentially ALL SOFTWARE. I'm sorry! macos. bluesky. th…
tweety fish: anyhow I promise that you have never ever once used a piece of software developed by ME using AI tools, that I can say with 100% confidence.
Open the thread →
7 experts · 19 posts · 6d ago
Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) VE, cybersocial occult investigator tweety fish Pavel Phillip Carter Doll Matt Darling
Multiple readings Concern & critique · 1 Policy & governance · 1
Matt Darling: This doesn't actually show a connection with AI folks, right? As an outside to the dynamics, I can't tell if it's actually true or something people say because it's funny/loosely connected to San F…
Matt Darling: I know folks in AI who are not Very Online and wouldn't understand the reference. I have no idea how to ascertain the relative size of the groups!
Open the thread →
4 experts · 15 posts · 4d ago
Hypervisible e.w. niedermeyer tweety fish Pavel
Multiple readings Concern & critique · 1 Building & implementation · 1
tweety fish: this from @ftrain.com is terrific, unsurprisingly, and I think this sentence actually understates the issue; it's not just that the big labs are in a hurry, it's that they don't see producing usefu…
tweety fish: instead having a fairly strong philosophical commitment to the idea that things like harnesses and workflows are basically half-measures that should not be necessary in the near future where AGI ju…
Open the thread →
3 experts · 7 posts · 3d ago
Matthew Kirschenbaum VE, cybersocial occult investigator Pavel
VE, cybersocial occult investigator: An interesting thing about AI, that we've classified under everything from hallucinations, to slop, psychosis, and unaccountability, is that it is creating a virtual world of appearances without co…
VE, cybersocial occult investigator: Whether it is falsified citations and social research based off of synthetic stand-ins, to militaries misacting on generated information, to people becoming lost in make-believe worlds and ending t…
Open the thread →
3 experts · 4 posts · 19d ago
tweety fish Pavel Amy Hoy
Multiple readings Policy & governance · 1 Markets & investment · 1
tweety fish: there is nothing whatsoever inherent to data centers or the kind of computation necessary for LLMs that means they have to be polluting; they're a great option for green energy for various reasons …
Amy Hoy: the fact that it’s intentional evil makes it worse imo they could’ve done a lot of things in a respectful way
Open the thread →
2 experts · 4 posts · 3d ago
Pavel austin
Pavel: Analogously, imagine an all-AI sports league. AI-generated "athletes" could incredible feats of sport that are not only unattainable by humans, but impossible by the laws of physics. It would be th…
Pavel: although another thing sports has going for it is that AI will never get so cheap that it can compete with college kids doing it for free could be some money in getting rid of the coaches with 8-fi…
Open the thread →
3 experts · 3 posts · 14d ago
Luke Stark Anthony Moser Pavel
Pavel: Second hand embarrassed for all lawyers that in the end, they could not financially ruin the entire AI industry
Luke Stark: Second hand embarrassed for all lawyers that in the end, they could not financially ruin the entire AI industry
Open the thread →
2 experts · 3 posts · 14d ago
Anthony Moser Pavel
Pavel: Missed two weeks of newsletter in a row. The piece is nearly done but I can't bring myself to write about AI again. What else is going on in UX that isn't just "your TV is now pervert glasses?"
Anthony Moser: i miss having other complaints
Open the thread →
2 experts · 2 posts · 14d ago
Pavel Abstract Tesseract
Pavel: Woman loudly talking on the phone: "Well I put it into ChatGPT to optimize our weekend and that's what it came up with. So you're just going to have to figure it out." Hanging up, complaining to he…
Abstract Tesseract: Not to diagnose people via skeet but it really does feel like chatbots could have been grown in a lab to exacerbate the worst tendencies of narcissistic parents
Open the thread →