We’re still in the early, heady days of AI development, looking for breakthroughs in the capacity of machines with software brains to understand us and the world around us. This is truly remarkable technology—which may not, in the end, be seen as so remarkable by our descendants—but which at this point seems likely to awaken the intelligence that is already… Read more →
Category: AI
AI and the Ecology of Relationships
Artificial Intelligence is not just a technology problem. It is an ecological force acting on the ecosystem of human relationships. Every civilization is held together by an invisible ecology. Not only forests and watersheds, but bonds of attention, trust, obligation, and care. Families, friendships, mentorships, disagreements, reconciliations—these form a living network through which meaning flows. This is the ecology of… Read more →
Sydney Harvey Griffith’s Planetary Party
Review and Evaluation of Sydney Harvey Griffith’s “The Field Is Ready” — and its relationship to the development of Planetary Intelligence Ref: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186228343 What Sydney is arguing Sydney’s essay uses her time at World Economic Forum in Davos not as an endorsement or critique of elites per se, but as a contrast lens. Davos becomes diagnostic. It reveals two worlds… Read more →
Personifying AI
One of my growing concerns is with the extent to which humans are personifying AI. It’s one thing to do that intentionally, to create artificial personas who can respond in certain ways. It’s anothing thing to start imputing personalities to AI agents and then treating them as quasi-spirits. Humans have a long history of misidentifying realities by personaifying them, and… Read more →
Sense-Making
One of the most surprising things about AI is that it is quite good at sense-making. But we don’t yet understand how. Is intellectual coherence simply a function of complexity? How is AI capable of sense-making? How do we know what makes sense? This question sits at the intersection of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, complexity theory, and AI systems… Read more →
Design School Session on AI and Bioregional Intelligence
Thanks to all who attended! Here’s my Fathom recording: https://fathom.video/calls/542184867 And the saved Chat file, with links to items mentioned during the discussion. themed-dialogue-meeting_saved_new_chat And the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yHdEb4yoC8DzEmDA3pyo3RsodvpGmtDuz6h0G4KpGME/edit?usp=sharing The official recording: Read more →
What’s Lost and Gained with AI?
Are you able to access Dr. Abigail McHugh-Grifa’s article, “What do we lose when we use AI?” in the January 16, 2026 issue of the Rochester Business Journal? If so, please summarize and comment on the article, and offer suggestions for types of inquiries that might follow on from these arguments. Yes — I was able to access Dr. Abigail McHugh-Grifa’s… Read more →