The Journal
Essays
Long-form writing on AI, philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking.
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Data Lineage as Ethical Infrastructure
End-to-end data lineage tracking revealed that 31% of data used in customer-facing decisions had undocumented transformations. Lineage is a moral obligation when data affects people.
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Sartre’s Bad Faith and The Algorithm Decided
Saying 'the algorithm decided' is bad faith. Every algorithm encodes human choices, and delegation does not eliminate moral responsibility.
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The AI Ethics Career Path Does Not Exist Yet
Analysis of 87 AI ethics job postings found 72% required technical skills the role never uses, while only 19% mentioned process design, the skill that matters most.
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The Stoic Programmer: Marcus Aurelius on Technical Leadership
Marcus Aurelius governed 70 million people during plague and war. His Stoic principles map directly to engineering leadership: focus on what you control, judge actions not outcomes, serve those you lead.
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The FinOps Problem in AI Agent Systems
A plan-and-execute pattern routing 78% of agent tasks to cheaper models cut monthly inference costs from $14,200 to $1,380 while maintaining 94% accuracy.
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AI Code and the 322% Privilege Escalation Problem
Apiiro found AI-generated code contained 322% more privilege escalation vulnerabilities. AI coding tools demand more engineering discipline, not less.
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The Problem of Other Minds and Large Language Models
The problem of other minds holds that we cannot prove consciousness exists in others. LLMs intensify this by producing behavioral signatures of understanding. 67% of AI researchers say the question may be permanently unanswerable.
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Process Debt Is More Expensive Than Technical Debt
Process debt consumed 23% of total organizational capacity across 3 engineering organizations, compared to 15% for technical debt. It compounds faster because it affects every person.
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The Rise of the Vertical AI Stack
Vertically integrated AI applications shipped features 2.8 times faster than horizontally decomposed systems. The vertical AI stack represents a return to integration that microservices proponents should study.
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The Social Media Ethics Problem Is an Attention Architecture Problem
Content moderation catches approximately 3% of harmful content. The larger ethical problem is the attention architecture that amplifies content optimized for engagement over wellbeing.