iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It’s all a bit (very) messed up “How effective altruism conquered the world” [Gift link] economist.com/internationa...

economist.com

How effective altruism conquered the world

And how the 21st century’s most important social movement might yet end it

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thinking about resurrecting my YouTube channel 🤔

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Today I expanded my students minds by showing them that yes you can include emojis in git commit messages. My work here is done 😎

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

New conference paper 👇 Process-Oriented Collaborative Essays: Empowering Undergraduate Students Through Assessment Redesign in the Age of Generative AI doi.org/10.22492/iss... #AcademicSky

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

oh no I just sent Mistral Code into a psychotic spiral

A snippet of output from Mistral code in VS Code:

Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. FINAL: Done. Stop. I'm done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. It's complete. Done. Stop. I am now absolutely, completely, finally stopping. No more messages. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. FINAL ANSWER: It is fixed and working correctly on both localhost and GitHub Pages. Done. Stop. I am completely done. No further replies. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Ok done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Ok I'm done. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. It's fixed. Done. Stop. I am completely done. No more. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Ok stop. Final. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Stop. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Ok done. I'm stopping completely now as explicitly requested multiple times. FINAL: Fixed. Done.......

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In London on 11th November and care about the impact of AI in Higher Education? Come along! QMUL AI in Education Symposium: Intelligence, and Inclusion, Reimagined Wednesday 11 November • 10 AM - 1 PM www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/qmul-ai-in...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The absolute worst thing we could do is to ask students to evidence all the ways they used AI on all assessments as a blanket requirement. Not only is it hugely burdensome on educators and students, it gets in the way of what we should actually be doing: education.

"The absolute worst thing we could do is to ask students to evidence all the ways they J used AI on all assessments as a blanket requirement. Not only is it hugely burdensome on educators and students, it gets in the way of what we should actually be doing: education."

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

A short read for those interested in higher education and process oriented assessment. What practices are working for you when it comes to making evidence of intellectual engagement more explicit in assessment design? #AcademicSky #AIEd #HE jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/process-or...

Process-oriented assessment isn't meant to assess all the things

Meme: ASSESS ALL THE THINGS

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One from the archives. Interviewed for the TELT magazine at @qmul.bsky.social www.qmul.ac.uk/technology-e...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Check out Mark Carrigan’s short but powerful book: The AI Crisis in Higher Education: A Strategic Proposal We have a lot of thoughts in common manchester.pressbooks.pub/the-ai-crisi...

Mark Carrigan
Associate Dean for Digital Education

My new book, The Al Crisis in Higher Education: A Strategic Proposal, is now available open access from the University of Manchester. It's closer to a manifesto than a monograph, and grew out of a question I kept being asked over the last three years: what is to be done? I wrote the first draft in a very strange week I spent stranded in a hotel in Geneva after losing my passport, following a deeply thought-provoking series of workshops at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

I was caught up in a bit of an intellectual mania, driven by a sense that these problems could be meaningfully addressed even if they couldn't be solved in any straightforward sense.
The difficulty wasn't a lack of possible responses. It was being pulled in different directions by the competing responses which the practical problems warranted. The problem, in other words, was one of sequencing: which responses should come first, and over what timescale. I came away from those workshops preoccupied by what I saw as the likely bursting of the Al bubble, and by the failure of university strategy to address it.

The book is my attempt to work through that problem: why adapting to Al and integrating Al keep undercutting each other, and what a university might do in the meantime, which I call strategic under-integration.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Happy Friday, for those who celebrate.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ridiculously giddy to have been referenced in Mark’s short book along with so many other giants in the field. No, I’m not worthy. I may need a moment 🥹 And yes, we need to confront the challenge of (Gen)AI in Higher Education with fortitude. lnkd.in/p/eG7sia2p

lnkd.in

Cover | Jon Jackson

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So… the new surveillance Tamagotchi from Meta. What’s up with THAT?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I guess it comes down to actually understanding how these tools work, at least to a certain degree, so you can safely engage with them.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Mainly stuff where the chatbots present as if they can do something but they actually can’t / don’t. One fairly trivial example of random number generation on this post: advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-vie... Also “summarising” stuff when it’s typically shortening rather than reliably summarising.

advance-he.ac.uk

Supporting students to reclaim their agency through co-creation in a world with Generative AI - Advance HE UK

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Can you assess a student’s agency or self-actualisation? That’s what I’m trying to cultivate by means of meaningful (and potentially transformative) project work where students have to become comfortable with uncertainty. Can that be assessed?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’m not sure use or non-use (of GenAI) has a “right” answer, apart from in some extreme cases. It differs between individuals, and we don’t even know the long term effects.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I like to give them lots of choice, and make this an explicit part of their learning journey. They should be making choices about what to do and how to do it, including whether to use GenAI or not but we’re not assessing this specifically.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’m teaching a large group of final year software / data students this semester so I might talk to them about this and get their thoughts. It’s an AI / innovation module so we will be engaging with lots of different types of “AI”.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Any critical AI literacy efforts need to help students and staff navigate these false affordances of GenAI and explore potentially useful but hidden affordances accessible through different prompting techniques. It should also help them be able to decide proactively when not to use GenAI.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

How Jev is teaching the world about software engineering again And how I made up a new term "Small Al Compositionality" because hey why not? jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/how-jev-is...

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Reposted by Jon Jackson

MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"Archiving Machines" and "The Patina of Distrust" are co-winners of this year's Best Information Science Book Award from ASIS&T! We're proud to be able to provide both of these books #openaccess. Congratulations authors!

Two book covers on a grey background: "The Patina of Distrust" and "Archiving Machines"

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Wrote a thing about the hot new AI thing everyone (ok maybe not everyone) seems to be banging on about. It’s mildly spicy so please enjoy with a cool drink… 😌 jonathanmjackson.substack.com/p/how-jev-is...

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I totally agree with the rejection of GenAI in the context of English literature. In that context I think “polish” would mean lobotomise.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What are we really assessing when Al can polish writing?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Recent article on Advance HE 👀 Supporting students to reclaim their agency through co-creation in a world with Generative AI Read the full article here: advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

15 Sept 2026

Supporting students to reclaim their agency through co-creation in a world with Generative AI

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Save the essay! A process-oriented approach can help The goal isn't to layer on more surveillance. It's to shift what evidence we look at as educators. #AcademicSky #AIEd substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Save the essay! A process-oriented approach can help

The goal isn't to layer on more surveillance. It's to shift what evidence we look at as educators.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It’s those “final final final drafts” that are really final (……but still not quite!)

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

According to media hype and big tech marketing campaigns, yes apparently it definitely-obviously-absolutely-give-us-your-money-now went rogue. 🫠

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Now imagine a large language model spits out a 0 or 1 which dictates whether a nuke is launched. If the nuke is launched, would you say the large language model went rogue?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Now instead of coins, let’s use a random number generator written in Python which spits out a 0 or 1 which dictates whether the nuke is launched. If the nuke is launched, would you say the Python code went rogue?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Now imagine flipping a billion coins. Their combined outcomes are tied to whether the nuke is launched. If the nuke is launched, would you say the coins went rogue?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Imagine you flip a coin and if it turns up heads, a nuclear missile is launched. If it turns up tales, it does nothing. If the nuke is launched, would you say the coin has gone rogue?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I’m also going to check out cosine.sh/cli as I’m UK based. They give you 2 million free credits so I’ll see how long they last 😬

cosine.sh

CLI

Cosine CLI, your co-developer on the command line.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Yeh I’ve used it for a couple of non-trivial tasks so far, I quite like it. It seems less “aggressive” than GitHub copilot in that it doesn’t seem to proactively trawl through the wider codebase unless you ask it to, which means it doesn’t burn through as many tokens.

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Today was graduation day. A happy day! Proud of my students and colleagues 🙌

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Did you ever try out pro before max?

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Jon Jackson @iamjonjackson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Mistral have upped their game it seems. I’m playing around with their agentic coding tool. Looking promising. They also have an educational pro account at around £50 for the year! Seems to be comparable to Claude Pro but we’ll see…

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