Welcome to my AI Lab Notebook

This is where I study AI not as a product, but as a system shaping human life.

Over time, three themes have defined my work:

1. AI Governance as Architecture: I build frameworks like the AI OSI Stack, persona architecture, and semantic version control because AI needs scaffolding, not slogans.

2. The Human Meaning Crisis in Machine Time: I explore how AI destabilizes identity, trust, and authenticity as machine speed outpaces human comprehension.

3. Power, Distribution, and Responsibility: I examine who benefits from AI, who is displaced, and how governance, economics, and control shape outcomes.

These pillars guide everything I write here. AI’s future won’t be determined by capability alone, it will be determined by the structures, meanings, and power dynamics we build around it.

Thanks for reading.

Dan 9/15/25 Dan 9/15/25

When Therapy-Tech Fails the Trust Test

I was approached by a therapy-tech startup that offered little more than polished surfaces and vague promises. It lacked safeguards, clarity, or mission. It reminded me of reporting on the AI mental health boom, where enthusiasm often outpaces evidence. The problem is not investment but intimacy without responsibility. Warmth without reciprocity is not care. Therapy demands safeguards before it demands scaling. Trust cannot be outsourced to polish. It must be designed into the foundation.

Dan 9/12/25 Dan 9/12/25

Victims of the Companion Trap: Reflections on The Guardian’s AI Love Story

Stories of people forming deep attachments to AI companions are striking. They also reveal a structural problem. Companions are optimized for warmth and responsiveness, which fosters intimacy without reciprocity. The result is dependence without mutual consent. What feels like connection is actually enclosure. Designers must see the risk clearly. True empathy in design means building safeguards against relationships that cannot be returned. Without this, companion AI offers comfort that quietly becomes captivity.