Omnivore bricoleur system builder
I build abstractions, tools, and languages to help humans (and machines) author, control, and understand AI systems. While I specialize in art and entertainment, and in storytelling systems particularly, I've also worked in domains such as healthcare, applied linguistics, library science, and cybersecurity. Like many of my colleagues, I am deeply concerned about the dangers posed by ongoing advances in AI. I hope for a future in which humans can live meaning-filled lives, and I would like to do what I can to help secure such a future. Currently I am interested in investigating the degree to which tacit narrative modeling drives LLM behaviors, since this could make the narrative-systems toolset applicable to AI safety. In other words, can we control an LLM by manipulating (its modeling of) the story it is performing?
I was brought up in an omnivorous AI tradition that values a broad set of technical methods — symbolic, statistical, and neural — and especially larger configurations of techniques that expose levers for authorial control. Primarily I am interested in system building, which I view as a teleologically oriented act of bricolage: construct an assemblage of AI components, potentially from distinct paradigms, that allows a designer to make a system do their bidding. In recent years, I've been outfitting neural systems with symbolic control mechanisms, and increasingly I am interested in symbolic interpretability mechanisms, which I suspect will have structural similarities. More broadly, I'm fascinated by the history of computing, and by the wonder of computation as a physical phenomenon that our universe affords.
I operate this boutique software studio specializing in author-centric AI systems for art and entertainment.
I also run an indie press and art dealer specializing in computer-generated literature and early generative art.
When I was on the faculty at Carleton College, I led a research group called the Studio for Computational Media Archaeology.
Story engine for a VR espionage game.
AI engine undergirding a platform that augments human life coaches.
AI-powered game master for a VR tabletop roleplaying game.
Simulation engine with authorable domains.
Story engine for an augmented reality game played over WhatsApp.
Engine for authorable RAG-augmented conversational characters.
DARPA-funded chatbot that wastes the time of email scammers.
Simulation engine centering on character actions.
Authoring tool for natural language generation in expressive domains, like videogames.
Interactive narrative game for teaching responsible conduct of research.
Work of immersive theater whose story and setting is uniquely generated by a computer simulation.
Tool for videogame discovery in the form of a hypertext network in which related games are linked.
Search engine that accepts an idea for a game and returns the most related existing games.
Simulationist roguelike text adventure.
