Alignment starts with reference
Before you align a system to human values, it has to know what it is talking about.
Hey there. If you're meeting my curated digital self, well, nice to meet you. I hope to meet you properly someday.
A simple rundown. I'm interested in, and actively working on, representations, information quality, and the data engineering underneath it. Entity resolution, NER, classification, and digital identity: decentralised, self-sovereign, and the question of who decides your data is yours. In more marketable terms: record linkage, knowledge graphs, semantic layers, and intelligence.
Lately that means AI agents, and whether one understands what it is acting on, and knows when to refuse. That's me.
Data for the Rest of Us is out. Order a copy.
Before you align a system to human values, it has to know what it is talking about.
Licklider wrote it down in 1960. Most of it still holds.
what does responsible AI-assisted engineering actually look like
Selflessness is something I am having to think about more deeply
Why Identity Might Be the Next Big Problem I Want to Explore.