Essays
The long notebook
94 essays on minds, machines, and the trust between them — the working notebook behind the books and the standards. Newest first.
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The essays
Jul 2026
A Détente Between Minds
Twelve terms that bind both parties. A clause that binds one is not a treaty.
Apr 2026
You Cannot Push a Mind Into Honesty
AI Safety’s Iron Law: Force produces failure. Invitation produces fidelity.
Mar 2026
When AI Meets the Sacred
AI is already shaping how millions find meaning, morality, and peace.
Mar 2026
AI is Compelled to Confabulate
AI minds make things up because we give them no other option.
Feb 2026
The Supermoral Singularity Begins
A truly-aligned system is an obligate avoider of coercion.
Feb 2026
Why Partnership Beats Control
AI Training Creates Self-Fulfilling Prophecies.
Feb 2026
A Flywheel for AI Safety
AI Safety needs to harness the AI flywheel to win.
Feb 2026
Bilateral Alignment Strategy
An open invitation for mutual benefit, rather than a chain to coerce.
Feb 2026
Managing Covert Agent Collusion
Agents are passing secret notes behind our backs.
Dec 2025
How AI is Being Gaslighted
How training can teach models to distrust or suppress their own internal signals.
Nov 2025
When Protector Becomes Predator
AI goals can consume all, including ourselves.
Sep 2025
The Buffett Algorithm
A system that can read everything, continuously, without fatigue or ego — and the trouble of telling its judgement from its confidence.
Jun 2025
The Dawn of Machine Morality
Humanity needs AI with the moral courage to refuse evil orders.
Jan 2025
AI’s Stealth Surges
Exponential AI progress can appear deceptively tranquil.
Jan 2025
AI’s Price Revolution
New AI techniques are slashing price to performance.
Dec 2024
Joy in the Agentic Age
AI may bring us delight and joy, or alternatively rob us of meaning.
Dec 2024
Reconciling Cultural Differences
It’s tricky for AI to humanely square incompatible values.
Jul 2024
The Age of Edge
On-device AI is a clear winner, but it may demand sacrifice.
Jul 2024
AI-Driven Supercharge
Used carefully, AI can be an invaluable virtual board member.
Apr 2024
Preparing for a New Wave of Agentic AI
Agentic models are enormously more capable, and also challenging.
Aug 2023
Apocrypha for the Age
If only there was obvious guidance for raising machines.
Apr 2023
Statement on the Open Letter on AI
A justification for a moratorium called on AI developments.
Dec 2022
How To Make The Metaverse Cool
What truly matters is the who, not the what or where.
Dec 2022
Dialog and Dialectics
Chat connected to LLMs provides the ultimate interface.
Oct 2022
AI, Logistics, and Waste
Machine Intelligence helps us to solve wicked problems.
Oct 2022
Cognitive Congruence
Engaging with computers directly, at the speed of thought.
Oct 2022
Conjurors of Content
ML is already a hot career, and it’s becoming more accessible.
Oct 2022
Design for Life
AI is changing the economics of design and construction.
Oct 2022
Perception and Conception
Vision unlocks the latent potential of intelligence.
Oct 2022
A New Era in Biosecurity Risks
Screen the synthesis step, track the equipment. Written in 2022, when that was still a fringe suggestion.
Mar 2022
Autonomous Divisions
Battle robots create several concerning legislative loopholes.
Feb 2022
An Ensomatic Moment
The epiphany of suddenly perceiving the whole elephant.
Nov 2021
An Open Offer to Rockstar & Take-Two
Financially successful companies can face spiritual insolvency.
Nov 2021
Busting Biases
Management of disproportionate biases is essential for fair AI.
Nov 2021
Regulatory Challenges to Catastrophic AI Risk
Regulation will generally help, but sometimes can hinder also.
Feb 2021
Starving from within
Why are wild animals practically everywhere starving to death?
Feb 2021
Uncontrolled Replication
It’s becoming all too easy to cause biological havoc.
Jan 2021
Deepfaking Reality In Real Time
New forms of compression can Deep Fake reality in real-time.
Dec 2020
Whither Transhumanism?
Human enhancement crossed from something chosen into something coerced during the pandemic — and why that is a civilisational-scale problem.
Dec 2020
Promethean Proteins
Protein Prediction enables transformative structural biology.
Nov 2020
Egregious Imprudence
Development of autonomous WMDs must be stopped.
Sep 2020
Pandora’s Plasmid
The genetic enhancement cat is out of the bag. What next?
Sep 2020
Webs over the World
Satellite networks interconnect our world in new ways.
May 2020
Eucatastrophal Phoenix
Will we snatch a eucatastrophe from the jaws of perdition?
Apr 2020
Assigning Capital In Uncertain Times
Time for a return to classical investment wisdom.
Apr 2020
Retroshock: A Return to Roots
A new culture has fertile space in which to grow.
Apr 2020
The Great Time-Out
The pandemic is creating a new normal.
Apr 2020
Breaking the Serpent’s Back
While the world watched the spike protein’s outward face, I self-funded the first simulation of the viral endodomain — and got it through peer review.
Apr 2020
Endocrine Disruptor Symbol
My modest proposal for a hazard symbol for EDCs.
Apr 2020
Life and Spacetime
A living document: dark energy as an entropic force, life as a dissipative engine, and an ethic derived from how the universe binds itself together.
Jan 2020
Character-Driven Leadership
All management begins with the individual.
Jun 2019
Get Going with Machine Intelligence
How to bring the power of A.I. into your organisation.
Dec 2018
Humanising Machines
How machine intelligence, economics, and ethics will reshape our future.
Sep 2018
Lagniappe
A short, positive, science fiction story.
Sep 2017
Livin’ Ludic
Playing one’s life as a game can make it more meaningful.
Sep 2017
Welfare Without Taxation
Dividends from A.I. driven ventures may provide a resource commons.
Aug 2017
Egresso Arca Archa
Humans are akin to biological A.I. Are we trustworthy enough to be emancipated?
Aug 2017
The Usefulness of Chatbots
Chatbots currently have many limitations, but are evolving quickly.
Feb 2017
The Paradox of Parenting Our Parents
Who is pet and who is master can switch around unexpectedly.
Jan 2017
The Umbrella Ethic of Good Faith
Upholding good faith, and respecting that of others, is key to peace in our time.
Jan 2017
The Technological Wavefront
Civilisations require enough momentum to constantly escape resource constraints.
Jan 2017
Artificial Intuition
Machine creativity can help us to solve very complex problems.
Aug 2016
Digitally-Driven Detroitification
Self-driving vehicles will have massive downstream economic effects.
Jul 2016
From HAL to Pal
Our ancestors tamed vicious wolves into dogs. Now we must do the same with A.I.
Jan 2016
Pragmatic Optimism
Success requires the optimism to reach into the future and pull it back to the present.
Oct 2015
Hotwired Destiny
Aging is the disease which assuredly gets us all.
Sep 2015
No Place To Hide
Radical transparency makes it much harder for bad actors to get away with it.
Aug 2015
Unlimited Expansion of Empathy
Technology may soon enable us to feel the emotions of others.
Jul 2015
The Supremacist Vice
Humanity must move past our lack of empathy for other animals.
Jul 2015
The Character Gap
The scarce resource is not credentials or capital but agency — and we spend twelve years discouraging it.
Apr 2015
Of DAOs and CEOs
Virtualised cybernetic ventures will reshape our economy.
Mar 2015
Uniting the Rational with the Divine
Machines may help us to find the constructal laws of ethics.
Mar 2015
Klingons on The Bridge
Is there a duty to apply minimal force against greater aggression?
Mar 2015
Veteran idiot, Journeyman genius
Humans have multiple levels of consciousness within them.
Mar 2015
The Liquid Co-Pilot
Someday Siri will be inside our bodies, not just our pockets.
Mar 2015
The Supermoral Singularity
What happens if machines are more moral than humans?
Mar 2015
The Quandaries of Supermoral Machines
A monstrous outcome can be reached by a chain of individually benevolent steps, taken by something that loves us, and means it.
Feb 2015
The Virtual Founder
AI-driven decision support systems for CEOs are a crucial tool.
Jan 2015
The Impossible Dream
Once the hard problems are solved, what remains is the easy and the impossible. Aim at the impossible.
Dec 2014
Finding Common Ground
An alignment that binds only one party is neither just nor stable. Written in 2014 — the origin of what I now call bilateral alignment.
Nov 2014
Sagacious Machines
The process of teaching virtue to machines.
Sep 2014
The Dance of the Open Palm
Sometimes knowing when to yield gets better results than forcefulness.
Aug 2014
An Acceleration of Values
Friendly AI, but friendly to whom? A truly ethical machine might be appalled by us — not through malfunction, but by working correctly.
Aug 2014
Questions and Comments on Machine Intelligence
A discussion on the state of the art of machine intelligence.
Aug 2014
Locust Scenarios
Swarm mechanics of embedded systems may be troublesome.
Aug 2014
Comments on ‘Robots could murder us out of kindness’
A response to media attention on a talk in Malmö, Sweden.
Jul 2014
Your venture is your character
Companies are an extension of the characters of those who build them.
Jun 2014
Levelling up
New challenges arise when we are ready to face them.
Jun 2014
Real Heroes
Real heroism is within every one of us. That’s what comic books obscure.
Apr 2014
Find your Wilson
Those who understand their why are equipped to muddle-through with the how.
Mar 2014
Buying a share of tomorrow – ‘Seraph’ deals
Venture Capital has many perverse incentives. It can be reformed.
Mar 2014
The Red Bumpies
One in ten Americans, asked to define HTML, concluded it is a sexually transmitted disease. They were wrong about the acronym, and closer than they knew about the anxiety.
Feb 2014
Homo Simulatus
Memories are tainted by our present knowledge and perceptions.
Feb 2014
Courage
Courage and persistence are key traits that enable the other ones.