iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Rick Steves @ricksteves.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

My one-hour special “Rick Steves Iran: Yesterday and Today,” which helps humanize 90 million Iranian people, is streaming free and ad-free at www.ricksteves.com/watch-iran.

ricksteves.com

Iran

Join Rick as he explores the most surprising and fascinating land he's ever visited: Iran. In a one-hour, ground-breaking travel special on public television, you'll discover the splendid monuments of...

3828931172

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Doesn’t this mean they were very much cut from the -same- cloth?

Highlighted: The rival startups are cut from a different cloth: Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI researchers who left to realize their alternative vision for safe AI.

000

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Does #GenAI in Ed make your ears perk up... or your eye twitch? 🤨 Join our #CHI2026 Workshop on Engaging Critical Resistance to AI! Run by a team of teachers and researchers, we're looking past the hype to learn from real classroom issues. Papers due Feb 5! More info👇 criticalaied.netlify.app

criticalaied.netlify.app

CHI2026 Workshop: Understanding and Engaging Critical Resistance to AI in Education

001

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

criticalaied.netlify.app

CHI2026 Workshop: Understanding and Engaging Critical Resistance to AI in Education

001

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

"[I]f disciplines move proactively, they can dramatize their central role, and show that our campuses are not just lovely places to scribble in blue books but sites where students discover things that aren’t yet contained in any model." ♥️ Approach AI with curiosity and a little wonder, not dread.

1174

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

AlphaSchool, a story How it started: “Motivation is 90 percent of what creates a great learning experience,” [co-founder] MacKenzie Price said. How it's going:

For the first few days, Barrios says, her daughter ate her snacks. Then one afternoon she returned with them still in her backpack, uneaten. Barrios, alarmed, asked if Alpha was providing different food instead. No, the 9-year-old answered. She told her mom that staff at the school said she didn’t earn her snacks and wouldn’t get them until she met her learning metrics.

100

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Fascinating! When I search for this article on bluesky, I see two different headlines: apnews.com/article/cali... "California governor signs law to protect kids from the risks of AI chatbots" "California governor vetoes bill to restrict kids’ access to AI chatbots" ...

100

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte @turnbulldugarte.com · 05/09/2025

The takeaway: 👉 Accommodating the radical right on immigration doesn’t win back voters. 👉 It alienates the progressive base. 👉 And it raises the salience of the very issue the radical right owns. In short: it’s electoral self-harm.

10761286

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

New advertising data privacy settings on LinkedIn for EU!

Header: Activity, Inferred, and Off LinkedIn data
Text: For those members in the Designated Countries (link), we rely on consent to process Activity and Inferred Data and Off LinkedIn Data for personalized ads, including measurement and improvement.

000

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

"this thing is very good at a narrow subset of tasks it has optimized to be good at, often fails catastrophically at things outside its remit, and is always confident that it's right" feels pretty PhD-level intellect to me!

6454

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 06/06/2025

The public meltdown happening between the world’s richest man 🙄 and the President of the United States 🙄🙄 once again begs the age-old question: are men simply too emotional to be in positions of power?

276109042399

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Need more communication like this! Many people don’t know where their tax dollars go.

010

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Moot Dengrich ☠️🎢 @catfishsushi.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

“I can’t let you do that, Dave” but as a feature

0716

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

If you're considering a CS PhD but concerned about pursuing it in US, I'm happy to chat about EU options. I just did this and am starting a #PhD in Spain this year on fairness and interpretability of LMs. DM me and ask about applications, funding, programs, etc. #academicsky #computerscience

An aerial panoramic photo of Barcelona in the evening.

052

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Going to my first CHI! Happy to chat tomorrow or Sunday with anyone building for learners or with interpretability folks! #chi2025

000

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Super excited to share that this Fall, I will be moving to Barcelona to start a PhD at Pompeu Fabra researching language model safety and interpretability around questions of bias and discrimination. I've been working on my balancing act: deep learning by day, beachside shoulder rides by sunset 😅

Me wearing a sweater walking alongside a beach with a small child on my shoulders.

130

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine

• Al Overview
The idiom "you can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once. It's a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they are unlikely to fall for the same trick again.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
• Licking: "Licking" in this context means to trick or deceive someone.
• Badger: The badger is a wild animal, and the phrase likely originates from the historical sport of badger baiting where dogs were used to harass

63350571637

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

okay now that you all have gotten a taste of America's rational and predictable new trade policy, everyone who wants to build your new factories here just form an orderly line

404233224591

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Stunning. I would have loved having this on my wall when I was a physics teacher!!

010

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Lots of coverage of the sentiment in this headline, but this article (by @eileenguo.bsky.social) also highlights the value of language-specialized models. So much nuance here ("slang usages and slurs, ... phrases written in a mix of languages) that's hard for people to grasp, let alone LMs.

technologyreview.com

Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models

Content moderation systems are being abandoned and defunded, leaving many countries looking for alternatives.

121

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

"Upper management does not understand what AI is and thinks it will solve untold problems. Junior devs rely on it too much without understanding their code first." I imagine something like this is pervasive across roles and industries other than tech / software engineering too.

000

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

I am too tired to write any more blogs this week but I listened to an hour of this and the quick summary of this for anyone interested so you do not have to listen to it is like:

353321

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

I’ve only barely started The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt, but I can already see how relevant it is to modern scientific and political life as both a diagnosis of how we got here and a guide to moving forward.

The cover of The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt (second edition)

100

Reposted by Dinesh Ayyappan

Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 10/01/2025

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

Ridgeline chart showing the distribution of global daily air temperature differences from the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900), for every year between 1940 and 2024. Each individual year resembles a hill, shaded in a darker shade of red and further to the right for warmer years. The trend is clearly towards warmer years, with 2024 standing out as first year above 1.5C.

20958782763

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

First impression: kinda weirded out. I wonder how this will handle separating music I like from music my toddler likes but we use my Spotify to play...

000

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I wish this had happened sooner, but I think it has a chance of convincing some yet-unconvinced people about the existence of a climate crisis.

000

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

My favorite books from the year! Quality over quantity -- these have taken me a while to get through... 💃👨‍🌾 Anna Karenina -- Loved the characters. would have been okay with a little bit less scything.

100

Dinesh Ayyappan @dineshayyappan.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Hi! I'm Dinesh. I've taught computer science, physics, and math in 3 countries over the past 10 years, and I'm now doing research on intelligent tutoring systems at Georgia Tech. I'm a bit of a career changer, but there's a thread: I like helping people learn important and difficult things.

030