The machine arrived before the philosophy.

The work

Here's what I've learned: the machine arrived before the philosophy. AI has outrun our theories of identity, agency, and spirituality. My life's work is now creating new concepts that inform and guide how we build at the frontier.

My work joins technical AI research and systems engineering with frontier AI philosophy, theology, Christian ethics, and spiritual practice. What we build also builds us: our habits, our relationships, and our sense of what matters. I want to understand how our systems shape the people we become, and how that understanding can guide what we build next.

A system may be capable of acting without having the authority to decide what is worth doing. How should its purposes be chosen? Who may delegate power to it? What must remain open to question? I develop concepts that give these questions practical force in system design, evaluation, delegation, and governance across people and machines.

Formation, agency, and responsibility

What capacities do people strengthen or allow to fade as they delegate work? What becomes of a person's voice when language can be generated for them? When an intelligent system prepares the options, who can question the result? Responsibility has to remain meaningful as work passes through several people and systems.

Where Does Moral Authority Belong in AI Development? explores the distance between technical capability and legitimate authority.

Three ways into the work

The work takes shape in three developing offerings, each with a different depth and starting point. Choose the question you are ready to work on; no purchase or prior level is required.

Ephemeris · ἐφημερίς · daily record or journal. A collection of daily notes for spiritually oriented technologists. An accessible place to connect attention, conscience, and spiritual practice with the work of making technology. The existing Ephemeris archive remains open while the new collection develops.

Kybernesis · κυβέρνησις · steering or pilotage. For leaders navigating the complexities of AI ethics amid disruptive transformation. It brings moral commitments into the decisions, authority, and feedback through which an institution steers.

Fos · φῶς · light. The practice of computational epistemology for advanced interdisciplinary systems thinkers and thought leaders. It examines how computational systems shape knowledge: what counts as evidence, which assumptions become infrastructure, and how a claim can remain open to correction.

Kybernesis: the practice of steering

I use Kybernesis as a framework for steering powerful technology toward the common good through accountable human judgment, feedback, and correction.

A value has to reach a system's rules, evaluations, thresholds, and permissions. Someone must be able to explain a consequential decision, hear an objection, and change course. The work is to connect what we say a system should serve with how it actually operates—and with who answers when it falls short.

Kybernesis — Practice Notes brings that work into decisions readers can make this week. A note offers one useful idea and a bounded practice: clarify an authority, test a rule, preserve a promise, or make room for correction. It should offer a way to notice what changes in the work and in the person doing it. Better judgment, a voice of our own, and responsibility for what we build are capabilities this practice should strengthen.

Meaning and the right to be heard

How do our media shape what we notice, remember, and hear from one another? I am interested in how people can influence the representation of their own lives, and how institutions can learn from those they describe. The inquiry reaches from a person's voice to the shared world our systems help compose—and to what their measures may leave out.

The Noosphere and the Right to Be Heard develops these questions through language, infrastructure, and human dignity.

Faith and the technological frontier

I brought these questions to the Forum on Faith in New York, speaking about faith and AI at the frontier. My concern is how our deepest commitments should inform the technologies we build and the powers we entrust to them. Reflections at the AI Frontier develops that address.

Christian theology and ethics shape my understanding of human dignity, our limits, and the command to love our neighbor. Spiritual practice brings those commitments into the formation of attention, judgment, and action. What makes a purpose worthy of commitment? Which forms of flourishing can a technology help sustain, and which might its measures overlook?

Cosmology raises questions about our place in the world and the larger order within which human purposes make sense. Mythology and media theory help me examine the stories, instruments, and forms of power through which people understand themselves. I bring these traditions into conversation with engineering because a design carries assumptions about what a person is and what a life is for. Those assumptions deserve examination alongside a system's capabilities.

Faith at the Frontier develops the Christian argument; the wider work welcomes readers willing to examine its questions from their own convictions. The Canon returns to older texts to examine the stories we inherit and the present choices they can illuminate.

Background

I have spent twenty years in systems engineering. I founded Lyrical, a firm for AI research, design, and innovation, where I serve as AI architect. I am the author of the award-winning book Mindshare, on the future of attention, intelligence, and human-machine collaboration.

I have spoken at more than a hundred global events, including WEF Davos, SXSW, Cannes Lions, the UNIAPAC Global Conference in Manila, the Well Being Forum in London, and the Forum on Faith in New York. Projects I've worked on collects the record. For keynotes and conversations, see Contact.

Read and put the ideas to work

The aim is to keep evidence, interpretation, and speculation clear, and to give an idea consequences in ordinary work. I write for people who make things, lead others, and want their work to serve a purpose they can stand behind. The Standard sets out the editorial commitments behind it.

The essays develop arguments and their sources. The Ephemeris archive offers earlier letters to read now. The research agenda sets out the technical and philosophical questions behind the publication; the three offerings show how that inquiry becomes practice at different depths.

Begin with a short reading path. For enterprise implementation, visit Lyrical.