Hackers' Pub

Syntax	Description	Examples
`"` keyword `"`	Finds the string within quotes, including spaces. Case-insensitive. (Escape quotes inside with `\"`)	`"Hackers' Pub"`
`from:` handle	Finds content written by the specified user.	`from:hongminhee` `from:hongminhee@hollo.social`
`lang:` ISO 639-1	Finds content written in the specified language.	`lang:en`
`#` tag	Finds content with the specified tag. Case-insensitive.	`#HackersPub`
condition condition	Finds content that satisfies both conditions on either side of the space (logical AND).	`"Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
condition `OR` condition	Finds content that satisfies at least one of the conditions on either side of the OR operator (logical OR).	`#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
`(` condition `)`	Combines the operators within the parentheses first.	`(#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" OR "Hackers Pub") lang:en`

Shafik Yaghmour @shafik@hachyderm.io

7/5/2025, 8:26:39 PM

Public

"The dangers of so-called AI experts believing their own hype": https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26635500-100-the-dangers-of-so-called-ai-experts-believing-their-own-hype/

This piece by Philip Ball is worth the read. His writing has changed the way I look at science. I still remember reading "Designing the Molecular World" and sitting there in wonder, making connections in science no other writer helped me make before.

#ai

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and a Nobel prizewinner for his role in developing the AlphaFold AI algorithm for predicting protein structures, made an astonishing claim on the 60 Minutes show in April. With the help of AI like AlphaFold, he said, the end of all disease is within reach, “maybe within the next decade or so”. With that, the interview moved on.

To those actually working on drug development and curing disease, this claim is laughable. According to medicinal chemist Derek Lowe, who has worked for decades on drug discovery, Hassabis’s statements “make me want to spend some time staring silently out the window, mouthing unintelligible words to myself”. But you don’t need to be an expert to recognise the hyperbole: the idea that all disease will be ended in around a decade is absurd.

Likewise, when his fellow 2024 Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, formerly an AI adviser with Google, claimed that the large language models (LLMs) he helped create work in a way that resembles human learning, he seemed to be speaking from deep knowledge. So never mind the cries of protest from those researching human cognition – and, in some cases, on AI too.

What such instances seem to reveal is that, weirdly, some of these AI experts appear to mirror their products: they are able to produce remarkable results while having an understanding of them that is, at best, skin deep and brittle.

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://hachyderm.io/users/shafik/statuses/114802504483379932 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)