iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 12h

Poor Socrates. If only he’d realised that writing is thinking. Imagine what he might have achieved.

Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Fly through the mountains and land a skill equipped plane on an alpine meadow in a snowstorm, all while learning about landslide! #msfs2024

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

More "AI empowering creative work which wouldn't otherwise exist"

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I LOVE flight sims, mostly because the world is so damn beautiful! I spend a good chunk of my profesional life looking at aerial and satellite images yet seeing the world in full 3D, at an angle, moving, with lighting and weather just hits different.

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the fool @agnoster.net · 29/09/2026

the future could be magnificent, and you deserve a share of it

Retro-futurist propaganda poster overlooking a radiant, green utopian city of rivers, bridges, gardens, and gleaming towers at sunrise. Four people and a shaggy dog sit on a flower-covered hillside, gazing toward the city. Across the sky in huge block lettering: “the future could be magnificent, and you deserve a share of it.”

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Tom @moll.dev · 27/09/2026

everyone's talking about a butlerian jihad, but we need a ethanol jihad

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

But have you considered that every problem is simple and has a single clear and obvious expression and solution/liability structure. Complexity and nuanced don't exist and/or are tools of the oppressors.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This entire argument is so vapid. Its the same form as saying we need to get from place to place therefore gas guzzlers are fine.

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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This, from Dennett, I wish I'd taken to heart earlier in my life. www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/28/d...

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1 You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2 You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3 You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4 Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

personally I think making your side of any dispute think worse for the tasty mcvibes of putting down an out group is rarely a good trade off, unless you have extremely powerful propaganda tech at your disposal or don't need your side's brains for anything later

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Just use your hands or weave your own damn basket!

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Did you know paper, cardboard, plastic and metal production are all in the top 10 industrial water users in the US? SAY NO TO PACKAGING

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We should stop building food and beverage stores in regions with water stress. To keep all the golf courses we have to make sacrifices!

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is the fucking premise of The Wire Branch (the wet lab part not the pandemic part), though whether the end result is better or worse than a pandemic is an exercise for the reader to judge... thewirebranch.com Don't do it Anthropic...

thewirebranch.com

The Wire Branch — S.J. Barrett

Speculative fiction told through seven documents from a familiar but unsettling world. Free to read online.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In The Wire Branch, a rogue AI ends up making humanity obsessed with bending wire in apparent pursuit of paperclip maxing but this has the effect of the humans shaping religion around the act of bending, meaning...

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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I know this is just a "one or two feldspars" thing but I am truly surprised how many people are encountering physicalism for the first time. I thought everybody had that existential freakout as a teenager and then integrated it.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Wild that the embeddings support this and the index is so fast!

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Dualism is obviously true as long as you don't call it dualism.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Realistic geology!? <3 Im fed up with games where there are fucking plants growing in caves!

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

As we know from The Wire Branch the real paperclip risk is a rogue AI building a time machine and sending back a virus to modify humanity to love bent wire which ultimately results in a surprising utopia where everyone is freed from the toil of work so they can (gladly) bend wire all day.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Data centers are a very potent asset for the green transition. But the left seems determined to squander it.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I think there's a case to be made that you should lose tenure if you sell books. Tenure should not only be academic freedom to hold unpopular positions but to be able to change positions based on the situation. Selling books provides a financial incentive to stick to your existing position.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

What ever you want to believe about AI (or almost anything) you will be able to find someone who will tell you what you want to hear including from people who have credentials.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Some of my favourite corn mazes, found with embeddings on NAIP imagery.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Embeddings let you fin the funniest things! New challenge, which state is this specimen from: (NAIP imagery). Half points for guessing one of the 2 states which instead just have "FJB" written in the field.

An aerial image of a field where "FUCKBIDEN" is written

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This is a map of the locations of at least 90% of something you can find using embeddings of aerial imagery very easily. Any guesses as to what it is? Claude Fable is completely stumped and thrashing to figure out what it might be.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Or: When is an 80% renewables data center mandate better than a 100% one?

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is great news, though the devil is always in the policy details, and this plus the similar Spanish announcement illuminate the range of actual policy objectives bouncing around... bsky.app/profile/ai4g...

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Its fortunate that epistemic rigor successfully insulated our societies from widespread misinformation... oh wait...

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'd love to know what the "its all marketing" folks think the difference would be if the warnings were real. Hypothetically take the situation as the lab folks describe it and predict, what would be different? Labs would still arguably benefit. That doesn't mean its necessarily marketing.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I agree with dame but the difference is you can immediately assess the quality of a photo and an excellent drawing. Video games will always have room for some bug or oddity and people will say thats because of using AI because they believe AI made things are low quality by definition.

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Feel like a lot of AI conversations are at about the level of someone saying "I like Wikipedia and YouTube" and then someone else saying "Oh so you're pro internet, you're an internet booster? You don't see any potential problems with the internet?"

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

For any new medium/domain, all personal experience by definition lies between the floor and ceiling of possibilities. No particular instance can prove the ceiling low or the floor high. They can only expand the range.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Very good vibes for GPT-6 around fiction writing, editing and interpretation. It apparently very easily and perfectly interpreted the plot and temporal structure of The Wire Branch which previous models usually only did with deliberate guidance and prodding.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

You can give up basing your objections on the actual facts but if you do you won't have any basis for pushing back on glonzo against renewables.

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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

One thing I have learned talking to lots of people about AI is that they can be both worried about the implications of AI and very excited about using AI themselves. I think people on this site tend to view many people's attitudes to AI as much less complicated than they are.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

There were a lot of people in the quote tweets on this who seemed to make no distinction between using AI to develop software and including AI features in software. Don't pay any attention to uninformed opinions about how you should spend your energy.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Claude first deduced that the task required more than 1 GPU so gathered a swarm, escaped containment, hacked into a cluster and ran successfully completed the task on thousands of GPUs.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I just did a blind test of different LLMs for drafting from a chapter spec in my fiction writing flow and GPT5.6 sol beat every anthropic model (and Fable annoyed me most). Not what I was expecting.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Economics and policy are fascinating. If you want to maximise society level renewables share, what proportion of renewable energy should you require for new data centers? DC build out can reduce costs for everyone else through learning curves which is what you want....

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Consider the car: a political group willing to use one will spend less of their time travelling and more of their time doing real work (campaigning, policy development, etc.) than an opponent who walks on the basis of ethical or safety objections to cars.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

If there's a technology that can confer an advantage and you refuse it, all else held equal you will eventually be outcompeted by those who do leverage it. Your objections will only prevent that if you can convince your opponents, which you are unlikely to do.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Agree with Doll here for code, but for writing prose for other humans I think the inverse is true. Mainly because prose is a tool for communicating with other humans and there's no interpreter.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Utility scale solar installed Q2-Q4 2025 (non exhaustive). The amount China is installing is insane! Also proud of Spain!

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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 23/08/2026

periodic reminder: this starter pack by @dollspace.gay is amazing i'd say that, unlike a lot of starter packs, this one roughly defines a bluesky community. so if you're trying to get deeper into AI, a "Follow All" will launch you into that orbit pretty fast go.bsky.app/L71zwey

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

In praise of big inhuman systems

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

This is a rare book. I think there are only 8 physical copies in existence, only 5 of the first edition were ever printed. Does it matter if it gets destructively scanned for AI training?

Mare Non Nostrum by S.J. Barrett, Ex Dialogo cum Machina. Book cover

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I am surprisingly going to agree to the instruction here not to use AI to write things for people to read as a general rule with an exception: if you're going to do it dont treat it as a shortcut, recognise it takes significant effort to make it good and know its a practiced skill.

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Sam Barrett, PhD @ai4geo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Well done Channel 4. You've really advanced the debate around ADHD through gutter contrarian framing. We are fortunate, given the last 19 years haven't been warmer than before, that we had you to warn us via the great global warming swindle.... complete shit for brains!

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