I'm a philosopher, sociologist, game designer, and entrepreneur.
My biggest contribution is a definition of "human values", “meaningful choices", etc that's
precise enough to create surveys, metrics, aligned ML models, etc. That same formalization of human values can
enable explainable, moral learning in AI, and be used to design systems that support meaningful living, perhaps
addressing problems with mechanisms like markets, ML, or social media, which optimize for engagement and revealed
preference, rather than values.
This work is a formalization of definitions of values from Ruth Chang, Charles Taylor, and others.
I've recently started a research organization with projects related to
formalizations of human values, LLM fine-tuning methods, democratic structures, and meaning-based mechanism design.
I also started a small online school, where I wrote a
textbook on Values-Based Data Science & Design.
My work finds applications in design
methods, product success
metrics, market design, recommender systems, AI
ethics, social networks,
political theory, the foundations of microeconomics, the nature
of emotions,
etc.
Contact me on twitter!
I got started by developing the meaning-based organizational metrics at Couchsurfing.com, then co-founded
the Center for Humane Technology with Tristan Harris, and coined the term “Time Well Spent” for a family of metrics
adopted by teams at Facebook, Google, and Apple.
I then started an online school and
wrote a textbook on Values-Based Design, and more recently am starting a nonprofit to bring about a future where wise AIs and humans collaborate
to help people live well.
My philosophy work descends pretty clearly from that of Amartya
Sen, Charles Taylor, David Velleman, and Ruth
Chang.
In tech, I was lucky to learn from people like Alan Kay, Terry Winograd, and Bill Verplank at Interval Research, from Casey Fenton at CouchSurfing (where I developed the metrics which guided the company), from Howie
Shrobe and Marvin Minksy at MIT. And more recently through
conversations with Bret Victor and Rob
Ochshorn.
My tactic of running social experiments through games and performance emerged from study with Christian Wolff (partipatory music) and Peter Parnell (playwriting) at Dartmouth, and then various
improvisational scores with Nancy Stark Smith, Mike Vargas, Ruth
Zaporah, and others. I had the great fortune to work alongside Albert
Kong and Catherine Herdlick
on the real world games festival Come Out and Play.
Finally, I've benefited from working alongside Ellie Hain and Tristan Harris, Nathan Vanderpool, and Anne Selke.