INDEPENDENT RESEARCH / PRACTICE NOTES

Ideas in motion, not ideas behind glass.¶

This is my working notebook on AI engineering, strategy, knowledge infrastructure, organizational transformation, and the human systems that determine whether innovation becomes real capability.

The notes range from emerging research questions to practical operating models. Some will become papers, tools, talks, or products. Others are here because thinking improves when it is made visible.

Evidence before theater Systems over slogans Useful, accountable AI

Subscribe via RSS Follow Field Notes in any feed reader

Latest writing

September 25, 2023
in Defense Technology, AI Assurance, Systems Engineering
3 min read

Trustworthy autonomy needs more than a better neural network

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected teams for its Assured Neuro Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (ANSR) program. The program will explore architectures that combine data-driven neural learning with symbolic representations and reasoning, with the aim of improving robustness and assurance for autonomous systems.

The research matters because high performance and trustworthy behavior are not the same achievement.

September 19, 2023
in AI Governance, AI Security, Risk Management
3 min read

Scaling policies turn capability into a management trigger

Anthropic has published a Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP) that ties increasingly strong safety and security measures to evidence that a model has reached particular dangerous capabilities. The policy introduces Artificial Intelligence Safety Levels (ASLs), loosely inspired by the graduated containment used for biological hazards.

The specific thresholds will require continued research. The management pattern is already useful: decide in advance which evidence changes the organization's obligations.

September 12, 2023
in Defense Technology, Human-Centered AI, Systems Engineering
3 min read

Disconnected autonomy requires better mission boundaries

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking technology for its Rapid Experimental Missionized Autonomy (REMA) program. The objective is to add adaptable autonomy to commercial drones so they can continue a predefined mission when communication with the operator is lost.

Loss of connection is often described as a communications problem. For an autonomous system, it is also an authority problem: what may the machine continue to do when the person can no longer supervise it?

September 6, 2023
in AI Assurance, Human-Centered AI, Risk Management
3 min read

Multimodal AI requires multilayer evaluation

Microsoft Research has published an overview of responsible artificial intelligence work on multimodal systems—models that analyze or generate across text, images, audio, and other forms of data. The research highlights a practical problem: risks can appear in the combination even when each input looks acceptable on its own.

Evaluation must follow the system across modalities, interactions, and real-world effects.

August 28, 2023
in Defense Technology, Innovation Management, Operating Models
3 min read

Replicator is an organizational test of speed and scale

The Department of Defense (DoD) has announced the Replicator initiative, an effort to field attritable autonomous systems in multiple domains at a scale of thousands within 18 to 24 months. The goal is intentionally aggressive. It is meant not only to deliver systems, but to demonstrate a repeatable way to move relevant technology into warfighters' hands faster.

Replicator will be discussed as an autonomy and manufacturing challenge. It is equally an organizational-design challenge.

August 22, 2023
in Knowledge Strategy, AI Engineering, AI Governance
3 min read

Retrieval is a knowledge-governance problem

International Business Machines (IBM) Research has published a clear explanation of retrieval-augmented generation, an approach that gives a large language model access to external sources at the time of a request. Instead of relying only on patterns encoded during training, the system retrieves relevant material and uses it to generate a more current, domain-specific, and potentially verifiable answer.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a promising architecture. It is not a substitute for governing the knowledge being retrieved.

August 15, 2023
in Defense Technology, Systems Engineering, Innovation Management
3 min read

Lunar infrastructure starts with interoperability

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced the 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) capability study. The effort will examine how a future lunar economy might move from isolated, self-sufficient projects toward shareable and scalable infrastructure for power, communications, logistics, and other services.

The timing of that architectural work matters. Interoperability is easiest to praise before systems exist and hardest to achieve after every provider has optimized a private solution.

August 9, 2023
in Cybersecurity, Defense Technology, Innovation Management
3 min read

AI cyber defense needs a transition path

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched the Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), a two-year competition aimed at using artificial intelligence to find and fix vulnerabilities in widely used software. Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and the Open Source Security Foundation are participating in the effort, with competitions planned around DEF CON.

The challenge is ambitious for good reason. Software underpins critical infrastructure, and human defenders cannot manually inspect every dependency at the speed new vulnerabilities appear. The difficult work will begin when a winning technique meets a real maintainer's backlog.