# Research Scope --- ## It’s all interconnected AI is not what biologist and ecologist Barry Commoner (one of the founders of the modern environmental movement) had in mind when he famously wrote: > Everything is connected to everything else.[^1] But it does apply to AI. Understanding it requires grappling with a web of interrelated ideas and disciplines. ## What’s in, what’s out ### Included topics My research is focused on AI but I triangulate between multiple perspectives, also drawing from adjacent disciplines that shed light on AI: - **Technology.** Techniques, methods, and systems such as neural networks, deep learning, language models, neurosymbolic approaches, AI assistants, AI orchestration, and multi-agent systems. - **Business.** Domains such as strategy, marketing, operations, risk & security, customer service, customer experience, software development, interaction design, and automation. - **Cognitive science.** Disciplines that study aspects and components of human cognition such as (alongside AI) neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychology. - **The human experience.** AI’s impact on the future of work, expertise, creativity, innovation, entertainment, education, relationships, and purpose. - **Applied philosophy.** How AI — what it does and how it works — can give rise to insights (or at least thought-provoking conjectures) about the meanings and functions of human fundamentals such as language, knowledge, belief, thinking, intuition, ethics, and communication, for (and between) humans and for machines. ### Excluded topics despite being within or adjacent to AI There are some AI topics I stay informed about but deliberately ignore (or address only lightly) in what I write, because there’s already abundant coverage of them, such as: LLM benchmarks, vendor and model selection and deployment, and infrastructure optimization. I focus on where I believe there are the most significant gaps — on creating new research I would want to read if it existed. ## On depth and ambitious breadth Some research efforts choose a narrow parcel of land and mine it exclusively. That can yield valuable results. My research ranges widely, and varies in depth depending on the topic—going deepest where decisions, stakes, or confusion are greatest. Its breadth is motivated by the fact that, in my experience, there’s great value in identifying and examining the cross-disciplinary connections. [^1]: Barry Commoner, *[The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology](https://search.worldcat.org/title/180245)* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). Commoner is known for applying systems thinking to biology, emphasizing the density of interconnections within and across natural systems, which led to his “[Four Laws of Ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Commoner#The_Closing_Circle).”