jonah

here's a new version of "what we talk to when we talk to language models", with an added section (pp. 16-23) on LLM interlocutors as characters, personas, or simulacra. philarchive.org/rec/CHAWWT-8 the new version discusses role-playing vs realization, the simulators framework, the persona selection hypothesis, and more -- in addition to the existing discussion of quasi-mental states, LLM identity, personal identity in severance, LLM welfare, and related topics. this version was mostly written before recent discussions of these issues on X and in NYC, but i've updated it a little in light of those discussions. any thoughts are welcome.

for the new year, designing a three month-ish CuTe DSL focused study group learning cute dsl by building FlashAttention fa1->fa4 on Blackwell. a spin-off on @TheZachMueller discord server - thanks for hosting. start w/ online softmax + tcgen05/tmem + pipelining, then fa1/fa2, gqa, kv cache decode, fp8, and fa4 bits. still in germination stage. plan is to have it inference focused.