iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Αχ! Άλλο ένα σημαντικό κομμάτι από την εφηβεία μου.

Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

gosh. I'm sorry I started this. I truly wish AI had never happened. It's a threat at every level. But it can be helpful. That's why guidelines are needed. Do read the two FT articles I quoted, inc The new premium product: books written by people - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

giftarticle.ft.com

The new premium product: books written by people

Some publishers think AI could not only help authors but replace them

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

You've never accepted any feedback, learned anything from anyone else?

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Two good articles in the FT. One a couple of months ago about AI and publishing. Another today about how AI helped someone become a chess grand master by the age of 16. We can no more uninvent AI than we can uninvent publishing.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

It's a big conversation. I write poetry, and I develop AI systems commercially. No-one thinks twice about poetry prompts, workshops, writing techniques. They're all external. I use AI to help me write. If you're fixated on publishing, I see an issue. If you're serving the poem, it's still up to you.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

An Easy Death by de Beauvoir. Superb book. Don't read it.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Today feels right for 'Briggflatts' by Basil Bunting. It's a long, lovely poem. Even if you understood not one word, the sound of it is exactly right.

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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today it’s the 1st in a new series about the weird & wonderful world of transhumanism: the idea that human beings can be transformed by technology and machines. David talks to historian of ideas @duncanbell.bsky.social about where it all began. Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Develop AI systems during the day. In the evenings discuss poetry, analyse translation choices (Greek -> English), do deep analysis of poetry (text, music) with AI. It's all amazing, magic. But I can feel my cognition changing. Writing poetry is my salvation, but I'm even beginning to fear for that.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I just did a cycle trip in Normandy. An unexpectedly beautiful day in Etretat. Cycling out of the town, there were a batch of conkers on the cycle track. Apologising to the others, I chose a little one. I put it on my mantelpiece this morning to bring some remembered warmth this winter.

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Words Without Borders & WWB Campus @wwborders.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Author Maria Stepanova and translator Sasha Dugdale discuss THE DISAPPEARING ACT, longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Read the next interview in our 2026 National Book Awards series at the link: wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

wordswithoutborders.org

The National Book Award Interviews: Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale - Words Without Borders

Author Maria Stepanova and translator Sasha Dugdale discuss The Disappearing Act, longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I have family members in Paris. I cycle there from the UK often, and absolutely LOVE cycling in the city. I do it for pleasure. This summer I spent four happy biking weeks there and, tbh, I'm homesick.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Isn't that a quote from Genesis?

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm not sure about the comparison on mistakes. Yes, it makes mistakes, like a sharp intern learning the ropes. But it learns from them, and not all humans do. Check this - www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

iihs.org

Waymo’s driverless cars crash less often than people

Waymo’s driverless vehicles have crash rates that are 68% lower than human drivers, new IIHS research shows. But as the technology is deployed more widely, a better system for tracking safety is ...

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

That's an lovely thought. I'm a great fan of Bergson, and latterly Karl Friston. It seems to me that consciousness is the most astonishing thing, and we treat it as the basic given of existence, like a napkin at a feast. Most laypeople are astonished that consciousness is still unexplained.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Good point - embodiment in the world has been underemphasised in philosophy (cf Embodied Consciousness). But the algorithm - what is the difference between me appearing to know, and knowing? How do you know I am not an AI? Does it matter? (John Searle's Chinese Room is food for thought here).

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes, but isomorphism is meaning. Think of an actual map - say, an OS map. Now think about the meaning you derive from it. The affordances it gives you. How you 'rehydrate' it. Can you describe the processes involved? After all, synapses fire or don't. Computers and 0 or 1. Not much difference.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Do humans differ? How do you know the person next to you has the same experience of being? Why do you speak your mother tongue? Physics tells us that the state of the universe proceeds directly from the prior state according to predictable rules. So are you animated by magic, or god? Or a machine.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's currently earning me a lot of money by writing complex platform code. So yeah, I have a lot of time to read and write poetry in cafes in lovely places. It has been a sweet summer...

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'd love to talk more. My side hustle for years has been the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness. Functionalists believe the mind maps 100% to the brain. That is the mainstream. In that case, a computer model of a human brain must be conscious. So it may not be farfetched.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And the article's premise, that anticipated doom never emerges, well, think of a small group of physicists headed for New Mexico in 1943. Eighty years later, and that one still hasn't been put to bed. And those WW2 doom mongers back in 1938. Boring, yes, of course.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Replying has been interesting. I feel 'piled on'. I didn't sing along with 'dumb old AI'. Because of that, I seem to have been taken for an AI proselytiser. Then the ontology of this thread allows only 'AI apocalypse freak'. What if we working with this have real concerns, and want to express them?

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It didn't put them out of a job. It just removed the need to recruit. Spare me the 'vibe coder' warning. I'd never deploy anything I didn't understand. Trust me, I'd rather AI never existed. But it does, and it's this capable. I'm just saying it out loud.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My only experience of another human consciousness is the assumption - theory of mind - that it is 'like' me. Yet I cannot imagine being Hitler. And 99% of neural activity is beyond conscious experience. The issue is how it behaves. Let's not be fooled by wondering whether or how it feels to be AI.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I look at your profile and we have much in common. I'm hoping you're going to be reasonable enough to tell me what exactly I missed. I'm normally not stupid. I program AI systems, and I use AIs to do it. They're multiplying like hordes of demons, and I'm concerned. Make me laugh.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I agree completely. This is my concern. 40% of the S&P is AI, and almost every organisation is looking to build products and services on it. So the world is tied to the AI companies. But we don't know how the models will change in the future, nor where the AI companies will take them. It's scary.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I must have. I thought it was that a programmer had been surprised when a machine did something they asked. The problem - and the great benefit of AI - is that it can do much more than you ask. Professional deployments make fewer errors and often give valuable insights.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

You clearly don't work with AI.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

'My Claude is stubbornly low-witted'. Well, mine isn't. It has saved me recruiting two senior developers, probably with about 10 years of platform programming experience. Drawing conclusions about its intelligence by comparing with the way you 'would do it' may actually be the danger.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Definite shout out for Dark.

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Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Maria Stepanova is reading and discussing her @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social beauty The Disappearing Act with me on 27 October In London www.pushkinhouse.org/whats-on/eve...

pushkinhouse.org

The Disappearing Act. Maria Stepanova in Conversation with Sasha Dugdale

Book Talk: The Disappearing Act. Maria Stepanova in Conversation with Sasha Dugdale

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

- Honestly my dear grandchildren, you’ll never believe how low rates were in the 2010s. - at least you built a load of infrastructure when borrowing costs were so low grandad? Right? Right?

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My hero Cantona. He's never let me down.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Hannah Sullivan's The Work Of Revision is fascinating for those of us who broil over how a text or poem becomes - if it ever does - its final incarnation. I like her writing. Three Poems is a masterpiece.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Three big influences atm - Laura Riding, Denise Riley and Hannah Sullivan. All advocate against a poetry performance/publishing circuit in favour of the poem itself. Forget what it's 'for'. Save your ear for the poem, not the applause. Liberating.

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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

🚨 Check out the new courses we've just launched to accompany our Philosophers and Great Essays series! For anyone wanting to go deeper into some of what we cover. Completely free for anyone to use. And more to come. Do please spread the word! www.ppfideas.com/courses

ppfideas.com

Courses | Past Present Future

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Thank you! Great idea. Reminds me of 'The Great Courses', some of which are available on Audible. I've found one or two of them an inspiring framework for my own further research. I'm going to test fly the 'Lives of the Philosophers'.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Just finished Maupassant's Bel Ami, expecting a mighty fall for Du Roy in the last pages. The way Maupassant builds then handles that expectation is dark. And brilliant, I suppose. I'm outraged. Honestly.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Reframing shouldn't be difficult. There are many synonyms.

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Aidan McGlynn @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Kate's biography 'Becoming Beauvoir' is still one of my favourite things I've read in the past 5 years or so, and so this will be well worth listening to (the book is available as an audiobook too)

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Investment. Why couldn't he say *public investment*?

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 26/08/2026

I'm not an economist but my back of the envelope math suggests that Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI can't all simultaneously sell $30 trillion dollars worth of enterprise solutions to a global economy where the sum total of all economic activity currently adds up to under $120t.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

There's actually a very good restaurant called just that - Entre Deux Gares. Can recommend it.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Don't worry. One day he'll make just as many people as happy as she did.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Good luck. Lifelong MS user here. I'm so fed up with CoPilot bindweed and MS bloat that I actually entered an Apple Store recently, and heard the sirens singing. Then I discovered Visual Studio (full) is not supported on Mac. So I bought another ThinkPad for MS to mess with behind my back.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Back in 2008 we had an Adobe Communications Services product that used a Flash client. We tested on MacOS using Mac Minis. One day Adobe updated Flash, which required a MacOS upgrade (paid). The upgrade wasn't available for our Minis. They were bricks. So...

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The Musee d'Orsay is the best day out in Paris - a day of beauty and enchantment.

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